The Princess and the Dragon
by purplegirl761
Summary: Two people, each equally driven by the beauty of their opposing goals. One horrific night that rips them both from the foundations of who they thought they were. The fight between good and evil isn't always black and white. T for "thematic elements" involving trauma; chapters will vary between fluffy and intense.
1. Before

**So, long time no see, guys. I've been mega-busy with English finals and a bunch of other stuff I won't bore you with, so my recreational writing took a bit of a backseat for a while - just long enough for me to develop a lovely case of writer's block. Then, last weekend, I was suddenly struck by this story, and when inspiration strikes you in the midst of writer's block, you go with it.**

**This isn't really a Drakkim (sorry, Neo), but it _does _examine their relationship through the years. I thought it might give me am opportunity to practice writing for Kim (cause, face it, I have woefully neglected that girl until now) while not abandoning my favorite character. And, sorry for the lame title, but it was all I could think of. **

**Enough chit-chat. Enjoy.**

**I.**

"Daddy, you gotta understand!" Kim Possible protested.

Her father's angry-parent scowl only deepened. Evidently reasoning with him was _not_ going to get her out of this mess. Kim was just getting ready to try a full-strength Puppy-Dog Pout when Dad put a big hand on her back and steered her in the direction of the Possible family car. She gulped. His hands were still gentle, but his push was firm. Even the Puppy-Dog Pout might not be enough to save her now.

Still, Kim straightened her shoulders and stood as tall as her petite eleven-year-old body would let her. No one was going to catch her slinking away from the scene like a scolded terrier.

She sneaked a glance over at her best friend, Ron Stoppable, who was also being steered toward his dad's old jalopy. Ron had _his_ head down, studying his skinned-up knees as if he was the one who should be ashamed. It bit at Kim's heart.

Ron glanced up then, as if he had felt her looking at him. He probably had. They'd been best friends ever since the first day of preschool, and Kim had always felt like they had some kind of sixth sense toward each other.

Even as Ron fumbled open the door to the Stoppables' car, his eyes stayed on her. They were awestruck and mournful, like he was watching her march to her execution.

Kim sighed and managed a little wave before she yanked open _their_ car's back door. Her six-year-old brother, Tim, toppled out and would have gone sprawling on the blacktop if his identical twin, Jim, hadn't caught him by the back of his red T-shirt.

"Oooh – Kim got busted!" Tim crowed as he wrenched himself free from his brother's grasp. He bounded back to his booster seat on the other side of the car and wiggled his eyebrows wickedly at Kim.

"Were you guys _spying_ on me?" Kim demanded angrily. It was bad enough being in what Ron would call "deep doo-doo" with her parents without also providing her little brothers with more teasing ammunition.

"Oooh – and she's cranky, too," Jim added. He turned to Tim and held up his chubby hand for a high-five.

Kim shifted her shoulders and put on her best stoic face, determined to ignore them. After all, she knew the little creatures were just glad that _she_ was finally the one in trouble. Their exploding science projects and high-tech pranks on their first-grade teacher had them in constant hot water at home.

With another sigh, Kim crawled over Jim's booster seat to _her_ seat smack in the middle. She noticed one of his hands resting temptingly close to her foot, and for a minute she considered stomping on it in payback. But, no, if she was old enough to ride in the middle seat with only a lap belt, she was old enough not to lower herself to the twins' level. At least that was what her mother always said.

The front doors creaked and the front seats squeaked as her parents loaded in. Dad turned around to face her and held up a finger before Kim could even get her mouth open to explain. "We'll talk about it when we get home, Kim," he said.

His voice was stern, and it made Kim shiver. She wasn't used to her father sounding anything but cheerfully out-to-lunch as he worked on his rockets and his deep-space probes. And if he called her "Kim" instead of "Kimmy-cub", it meant she was in _very _deep doo-doo.

_Still, he didn't call me Kimberly,_ Kim reassured herself as the car squealed out of the parking lot. At least there was that.

Kim stared, solemnly, straight ahead, so she wouldn't have to see the twins making goony faces at her and snickering into their sleeves. No matter how strong she was trying to be right now, that would have sent her over the edge. She watched through the windshield as neighborhood trees rushed by, dreading the lecture she was sure to get at home.

She hadn't _meant_ for it to happen.

She'd been standing in the park's huge, grassy field, practicing her cheerleading moves. After all, somebody else's life might depend on her being able to use them, just like Mr. Paisley's had last month.

But just as Kim had been coming up from a perfect split, she'd heard a horribly familiar _thump_. A _thump _that could only mean someone had fallen off the jungle gym. Or been pushed. With Ron, the two were equally probable.

She'd taken off toward the playground equipment in bigger jumps than she'd thought she was capable of, hoping against hope she wouldn't have to set one of Ron's bones or something equally disgusting. And she'd arrived just in time to see Rip Snorter, the biggest bully in sixth grade, swing neatly off the monkey bars and start to Ron like he was moving in for the kill.

Ron had been laying there, gasping, on the wood chips below the play equipment, both knees and one elbow scraped. His face was scrunched like he was waiting for another blow, and something in Kim had snapped.

The handsprings and kickflips she'd been so carefully practicing had come to her instinctively, the way they had that night at Paisley mansion. She hadn't even realized she was gearing up to punch Rip until she felt her fist slam into his little pug nose and saw the bully stumble backward with blood streaming down his face. Kim had watched with a strange mixture of satisfaction and horror.

Because she really hadn't _meant_ to.

Dad slid the car into the garage and put it in park. It was Mom, however, who finally spoke. "Go on up to your room, Kimmy," she said firmly. "Dad and I will be there in a minute to talk to you."

Kim nearly went limp with relief as she unbuckled her seatbelt and tried to get to a door without kicking one of the twins in the head. Mom was using that no-nonsense voice she always brought out when one of the kids was in trouble, but she had called her "Kimmy". Maybe they'd cooled down during the drive home, too.

**()()()()()()**

". . . And that's what happened." Kim shifted her eyes up to her mother and stuck out her lower lip just a smidge. "I know I probably shouldn't have punched him, but I was just defending Ron."

Dad cracked his knuckles and examined her grimly. "This is a tough call, Kimmy," he said, shaking his head in that way grown-ups did when they were confused. "A Possible is never afraid to stand up for what's right. But, as a general rule, we try to do it in…less violent ways."

Kim swallowed hard and nodded. She knew her dad was right.

Mom sat down next to her and put an arm around Kim's shoulders. "You know, honey, one of these days you may find yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to fight. Now, I'm not saying that's what happened today - "

Kim nodded again, not wanting to speak. Her mother's voice was suddenly wise and she wanted to hang onto every word she was saying.

"- but if it ever _does_ happen, I just want you to remember one thing." Mom gently cupped Kim's chin in her hand and tilted it up so she could look her in the eye. "No matter who you're fighting or what they've done – there's a person in there, Kimmy."

Kim couldn't even find the strength to nod that time. She just gave her mother's hand a squeeze. Mom squeezed back, and Kim knew she understood.

"I'm proud of you for standing up for Ronald," Dad said. He was starting for her bedroom door, which meant the conversation was just about over. "But you _have _lost your TV time for tonight." His eyes softened at the corners. "Just so you'll remember to do it differently next time."

"Yes, Dad," Kim replied, trying not to sigh _too_ heavily. She knew there were much worse punishments.

Once her parents had left, Kim fell back onto her bed and pondered what to do with her TV-less afternoon. She could check her website – reread the mystery novel she'd tucked away in the deepest corner of her closet until she'd forgotten who the culprit was – maybe even organize a game of Scattergories with the twins if they could act civilized for fifteen minutes.

Still, as she stared at the smooth white ceiling, her mother's words kept echoing in her mind. "There's a person in there," she had said. No matter how awful Rip Snorter was, the kid still had to be a human being. His blood had looked exactly like Ron's.

**II.**

_Things I will iliminate once I am ruler of the world!_

Dr. Drakken frowned to himself and tapped the eraser end of his pencil against his teeth. It was still missing something.

_world!_

There. Much better. One exclamation point would never do when one was talking about world domination.

_*Automatic toilets. They just create far too much tension! Will it flush on time? Will it flush too early? Will it flush at all? Postitively NERVE-WRACKING!_

Drakken made a face and moved on to the next item.

_*Bullies._

_*Daylight Savings Time. Can someone give me ONE good reason why this exists, other than to mess up our internal clocks? Anyone? No? Didn't think so._

_*Chocolate Ex-Lax, especially the stuff that is not CLEARLY LABELED as such. That's just too cruel, even for a ruthless dictater like myself. Me. My own person. I, Dr. Drakken. Blah!_

_*Confusing noun forms._

"I didn't really plan on becoming a teen hero," the girl on TV admitted. "It just sort of…happened."

Drakken scowled at her uneasily. That was sort of the way he felt about becoming a supervillain. Err, _used_ to feel, before evil had filled every fiber of his being.

The girl gave a nervous smile. Her braces glittered in the sun, and he felt a flash – a very small flash – of sympathy for her. Of course, this girl probably never had headgear. She carried herself too proudly to have ever had anything _too_ embarrassing happen to her.

Drakken growled under his breath. All traces of sympathy fled. This girl looked so confident, she'd probably had life handed to her on a silver platter, despite the fact that she apparently couldn't afford a shirt that covered her navel. Even if their paths never crossed as villain and crime-fighter, he already hated her.

"…But the whole saving-the-world gig is pretty cool, I have to admit," the girl continued. Her smile grew bigger and more confident, demanding that Drakken's own facial muscles perform the inverse operation. "Who knows; maybe I really _can_ do anything!"

Then _it_ happened. With one smooth motion – couldn't she at least have been clumsy? – the girl gave her long red ponytail a flip. It bounced perfectly back into place, and Drakken clenched his teeth in a vain attempt to make his stomach not feel so shaky.

That flip. The universal girl sign for I'm-so-much-better-than-you. He should know; every girl he'd ever known had broken it out within ten minutes of meeting him, short of his own mother. Shego was a master at it. And she had so much hair, she could probably demolish a small building by flipping it.

Drakken put that right at the top of his list of things to eliminate once he was finally in control of the planet.

Or he would have if he hadn't just ripped the list up in frustration.

**III.**

With what she hoped was a stony expression, Kim Possible stared into the darkness of yet _another _evil lair's shark pit. She made sure to give an extra-cold glare to the young woman in the jumpsuit – _Shego_, Wade had called her – who appraised her right back with hard green eyes. She couldn't have been over twenty years old, but she had the most evil smirk Kim had ever seen on a human face. And she had seen some pretty evil smirks.

Shego kept her chin pointed straight at Kim. She had a sharper jawline than some of the _guys_ Kim knew, but there was no denying this girl's exotic beauty. Ron had obviously noticed it, too, given he was staring at her with his eyes round and his mouth hanging open as if its hinges were busted. He was doing everything but holding up a sign that read,

Hey! You're really hot!

Not that it did anything to ease Kim's concerns.

The woman was good at martial arts, and she hadn't just learned them for self-defense the way Kim had, either. Her kicks and leaps and flips had revealed raw talent, while her gleaming eyes showed a sadistic kind of pleasure found in leveling her enemies. Her fingers had been sharp as she'd clung to Kim's wrist and tied double-knots of rope around her and Ron, sharper than fingers should feel, no matter how long their nails were. They'd felt more like knives.

Kim flipped her gaze down to the girl's hands now. Sure enough, the last few inches of her green-and-black gloves curved under like hawk's talons. Either Shego was a freak of nature, or she was hiding some pretty heavy-duty weaponry in her gloves. Either way, she was trouble.

But no matter how fierce she was, Kim knew Shego wasn't calling the shots around here, at least not all of them. She acted way too apathetic about the whole thing to have engineered the nano-tick theft. She was following someone's orders. Kim shivered, picturing the kind of person who would be able to make Shego answer to them.

As if on cue, Shego jerked her head of massive dark waves around and directed her smirk toward the shark pit's door. Kim could hear footsteps thundering toward them from the other side. Whoever this guy was, he walked like he was on his way to a fire.

That, or he just really enjoyed dropping kids to his sharks. Kim gave a nervous swallow and heard Ron gulp his agreement.

_Stand tall, Kimmy_, she could hear her father instructing her. _Anything's possible for a Possible!_

Corny? Definitely. But it was encouraging enough to let Kim straighten her shoulders and tilt her chin upward to look her new foe in the eye.

Over the years, she'd seen several strange-looking supervillains. There'd been a guy with a bionic eye and a woman with bright yellow eyes, not to mention quite a few street punks with missing teeth and weird tattoos. So when Kim found herself staring at a jagged scar and the most pronounced chin she'd ever seen outside of the host of _The It's-So-Late-You-Should-Be-In-Bed Show_, she wasn't terribly surprised.

Scar-and-Chin-Man stepped closer to her, throwing the shadow of his hulking shoulders across the water. Classic attempt at intimidation.

Kim recognized the look on his face – the cocky sneer, the arms folded smartly over his chest, his honkin' chin thrust at her in a way meant to convey the total control he thought he had over her now. She'd seen it on the faces of countless villains in her two-and-a-half years of crime-fighting. She'd _wiped it off_ the faces of countless villains in the same amount of time.

Kim fought back a smirk of her own. She was going to enjoy knocking this guy down a few pegs.

"Ah, yes," Scar-and-Chin-Man began. His voice was deep and booming, and Kim felt Ron shrinking down behind her. "Kim Possible." The sound of her name coming out of his mouth made her want to hurl.

"And her little chum," added Shego. Her eyes were beginning to gleam with a calm pleasure that gave Kim the willies.

Evidently it upset one of the sharks, too, because it chose that moment to swim to the surface and snap its jaws menacingly in their general direction. Kim took a deep breath and tried to maintain her steady gaze, which was hard with fins circling her feet and Ron's sweat dripping onto her neck. "Did she have to say _chum_?" her best friend whimpered.

Kim gave him an elbow to the ribs, as best as she could through the ropes. At times like this, it was best for him just to keep his mouth shut.

Scar-and-Chin-Man stepped still closer. The aquarium's lights washed over his face, and Kim felt her own jaw nearly come unhinged.

What she'd assumed was dead-pale skin turned out to be the powder-blue shade of the twins' old nursery. And this was no paint splatter. It smoothly covered his face, his chin, and what she could see of his neck above a darker blue lab coat.

He definitely wasn't having any trouble breathing, though. He proved that by taking yet another step toward Kim and huffing straight into her face. In some strange, detached corner of her mind, she noticed he had peanut-butter breath.

"I've heard of your work, Kim Possible," the man began. "I presume you've heard of me, too!"

Kim glanced at him, surprised by the almost gleeful way his voice went up at the end of the sentence. _Come on, Kimmy-cub_, she could hear Dad encouraging her. _You can defeat this guy; no sweat!_

But it was Mom's voice that came through the loudest. _There's a person in there, Kimmy._

Kim shrugged at the man. She _hadn't_ heard of him, but with every word that came out of his mouth, she was less and less worried about being shark bait any time soon.

"You know…mad scientist….wants to take over the world…" Scar-and-Chin-Man continued. He twirled one finger around in the air in a way that so preteen-y, Kim almost laughed out loud.

_I hate to break it to you, pal, _she thought, _but I've fought a _lot _of people who meet that description._ But she merely shook her head and continued to observe her newest nemesis. He had a strange smirk, one that twitched at the corners like it wanted to turn into a smile. Under the glitter of evil in his eyes, there was a more childish sparkle that he was obviously fighting under his own skin to keep from letting it out.

But it wasn't quite working. There was a person inside him, all right, and it looked like a kindergartener to boot.

"Dr. . . ." The man's voice wound even higher, far out of its villainous boom. His almost-black eyes smoldered under his one thick eyebrow.

Kim shook her head again, fighting to keep the smile off her own lips.

The mad scientist's face fell, every feature flopping toward his chin. "Dr. . . Dr. . . Dr. . .Dra. . . Drakk. . ."

Kim frowned to herself. _Drakk_? It wasn't ringing any bells for her, villainous or otherwise.

"Drakken!" the man finally burst out. "Dr. Drakken?"

"Dr. Drakken?" Kim repeated in disbelief. It sounded like something her cousin Larry might come up with when he was role-playing with his geeky friends.

"A-ha!" Dr. Drakken poked a finger in the air. "I see my reputation precedes me!"

He _had_ to be kidding. Kim lifted her eyebrows at Shego, who shook her head ever so slightly.

He wasn't kidding.

Kim snapped her eyes back to Dr. Drakken and kept it just steady and cold enough so he could see she wasn't a person to be messed with. And she didn't let up.

The mad scientist's smirk stayed firmly in place. His eyes, though, darted from her to the door to Shego to Ron and then finally back to her. One surprisingly small foot began to jitter.

Yep. The kindergarten was emerging.

And Kim was no longer afraid.


	2. Last January

_I'm sorry if any parts of this chapter or the following ones seem stupid. I've been having major fatigue/sleep issues, and I feel like I'm in a fog at least half of the time. Not trying to bore anyone with a sob story, but if my writing quality seems to have deteriorated, that's why._

**()()()()()**_  
_

**Him**_  
_

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty!"

Dr. Drakken felt hands reach down and shake him by the shoulders, jolting him straight out of the first sound sleep he'd had in a week and a half. He opened his sticky eyes – why did he always forget to take out his contacts? – and licked at his sticky lips – blah, he needed water – and studied the face in front of him.

Pointy. Green. Pretty, if its eyes hadn't been so narrow and twinkly in a mean way. Drakken's amazing powers of deduction led him to…uh…deduct that it was his sidekick Shego.

_That_ made sense. Sometimes when Shego came into work in the mornings, he'd dozed off on top of his evil-genius blueprints and she would have to shake him awake.

Drakken frowned. Check that. It _would_ have made sense, except for the fact that the windows behind Shego revealed no sunlight whatsoever. Not even the thin gray kind of a thunderstorm-day. Drakken yawned and stretched his stiff, knotted arms up above his head, grimacing in relief as his back cracked. On their way back down, though, his fingers hit something triangular and cardboard on his head and made it tumble down into his face.

_Sudden darkness! _screamed one half of his brain.

_Don't panic,_ commanded the other. Drakken tried to listen to that part – he _always_ tried, but sometimes it was just so hard _not_ to panic. He reached upward and yanked the strange cardboard triangle off his face. It thwapped back into place with a snap of a rubber string.

Wait a minute. Cardboard triangle…string…

Drakken chuckled sheepishly to himself. It was just a party hat. And if he'd been wearing it top of his head, it had to be a special occasion. Maybe that would explain why Shego was waking him up even though the clock read 11:30 PM instead of AM. Or the giant banner spread across the kitchen door that read "HAPPY NEW YEAR."

New Year's Eve!

Drakken sprang off the couch in excitement as he remembered. That's right, the henchmen and Shego were staying over at the lair to count down to midnight and throw confetti and blow horns and bang on pots and make New Year's Resolutions! Each activity made his heart beat at least ten times faster, until he was sure it was going to explode out his ears.

He glanced at the clock again. "Eleven-THIRTY?" he gasped out loud. "Shego, there's only half-an-hour left in this year!"

"Which is why I woke you up," Shego replied in her usual deadpan voice. "Please explain to me why you can stay up all night working on some evil plan – but when New Year's Eve rolls around, you conk out on the couch at 9 PM sharp."

Drakken looked down at his hands and twiddled his thumbs together. He _would_ explain it to her, if he understood it himself. "Everyone's allowed a brief catnap on New Year's Eve to ensure they're awake in time for the countdown!" he snapped instead.

"True." Shego rummaged around in her leg pouch and produced her nail file. "But I don't think it counts as a catnap anymore once you start snoring." Her face had that you're-being-a-loser-again expression that never failed to twist Drakken's internal wirings like Tesla coils.

"I do not snore!" he growled. There was a nice, villainous boom to his shout, and it made some of the hairs on the back of his neck settle. He always _felt_ tougher when he could make himself _sound_ tough.

Shego didn't appear to be intimidated by Drakken's toughness. "You do when you're as dead to the world as you were just now." She leaned closer with a teasing sparkle in her eyes. "You drool, too."

By sheer instinct, Drakken's hands went to the corners of his mouth and, sure enough, swiped away two thin steams of saliva. He felt his cheeks sizzle scarlet. "NRRR – NNGGH – SHEGO!" he bellowed. That didn't sound tough, but it was the only way to lessen the throbbing in his veins.

And once they were lying flat again, he was able to close his eyes and breathe deep from his chest, the way he was supposed to. That kind of teasing was just the way some people – people like Shego – showed affection. Even though Drakken hated being laughed at, he knew it was just meant to symbolize their friendship.

Probably.

"Never mind all of that!" Drakken burst out, hoping to silence both Shego and his racing thoughts. "It is time for the evil family to toast and announce our New Year's Resolutions!"

Shego popped her herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. "With sparkling grape juice," she said with a moan.

"With sparkling grace juice!" Drakken repeated in a much more cheerful voice. The beginning of a fresh year, with no failed evil plots or jail time or nightmares in it, was getting closer and closer by the minute. It was so exciting, he could hardly stand it!

He skipped into the kitchen, skidding his happy, dancing feet across the linoleum floor toward the refrigerator. _What does Shego have against sparkling grape juice, anyway? _Drakken wondered as he yanked the bottle out of the refrigerator door and shut it again with his foot. After all, it was sparkly, and everything had to be sparkly on New Year's Eve. It was a _law_.

Or at least it would be once he took over the world.

And it was good, unlike the stuff Drakken and Shego had toasted with _last _year. The stuff that had tasted like good fruit left to spoil in his cousin Eddy's sweat socks, the stuff that had made him cough and gag and spit while Shego stood over him, shaking her head and saying, "How in the world have you never tasted champagne before?"

He was _lucky_, that's how.

Drakken shook the nasty memory out of his head and plunked the bottle of grape juice down on the counter. That didn't matter now. The only things that mattered were that the clock now read 11:47 – and that it was _his _job to pour the juice for the toasts.

Drakken folded his arms across his chest – he could feel his heart thumping away excitedly in there – and examined the wine glasses in front of him. It was kind of hard not to be distracted by their amazing curved sides that reflected and refracted lights in all kinds of wonderful ways…

_FOCUS, Drakken!_

Right. Focus. Pay attention. He shook his head again, took the bottle in his hands, and lifted it as gently as he could. It seemed extra wobbly all of a sudden, now that he had such a pressing duty to perform.

Drakken scowled down at the sparkling grape juice bottle, daring it to defy the world's future ruler. When it stayed steady, he reached up, took the cork off, and it made an amazing POP sound that made him very happy, and leaned over the first glass.

The juice poured out, pale and steady, into the glass, almost to the top. Drakken pulled the bottle away, turned it right-side-up, and the flow stopped. Amazing. He'd done it just right.

Well, of course he'd done it right! Drakken snorted under his breath and jerked his shoulders straight just in case anyone was watching him. He was a supergenius, after all.

And apparently an expert grace juice pourer, too, because he filled the next fifteen glasses the exact same way. No dribble. No mess. No spilling. No kidding!

Drakken felt a grin of pure pride slide across his face. Wouldn't Shego be proud of him? "Drinks are ready!" he called out in his best evil-bartender voice.

The henchmen charged into the kitchen, practically falling all over each other to get to the counter. None of them mentioned his amazing juice-pouring abilities, but that was okay. They didn't tend to notice little details like that – or big details like the fact that his Giant Radioactive Cheese Grater of Evil was self-destructing.

Shego sauntered up to the counter then and grabbed one of the two glasses left on the counter, because Drakken was a good friend and let her choose first. "Shego!" he squeaked happily. "I poured this without spilling a _thing_!" He leaned closer to her and grinned into her face to let her know what a monumental occasion this was.

Shego half-smirked back at him. "Good for you."

Drakken felt his entire bodily structure collapse. Three short, sarcastic little words, and she'd brushed away his great achievement! It hurt too badly to even make him mad, and he hated that kind of hurt worst of all.

It was almost enough to make him forget his New Year's Resolution. Almost. but not quite.

"I'll go first!" he cried, even though he was pretty sure everyone already knew that. The boss _always_ went first.

There was a general mumbling of "All right," from the henchmen (some of them were already starting to sip their grape juice, the dolts). Shego just rolled her eyes like she was bored with the whole thing.

Drakken took one last glance at the clock – 11:52 – and raised his glass in the air, as high as his lanky arms – err, his long and muscular arms – could lift it. "This year, I resolve to…" He paused for a moment to gather all the inner molecules of his wickedness or something like that. "…CONQUER THE WORLD!"

_Pound, pound, pound_ went his heart. "MUA-HA-HA!" escaped from his mouth. The henchmen stared in awe, and a warm place opened up inside Drakken's chest.

Yes. This was the way New Year's should be.

"I resolve to work out more," Fred said, raising his glass to meet Drakken's.

"I resolve to floss my teeth every day!" Bill added.

Drakken grinned from ear to ear. Good, good. The henchmen were getting into the spirit of things, too.

"I resolve to write a novel!" Arthur cried from one corner.

"I resolve to improve my bowling score!" Dan hollered.

"I resolve to call my mother once a week!"

"I resolve to call Marc's mother once a week!"

"I resolve to stop pushing large red buttons!"

Finally, the only one left was Shego. She had her mouth all twisted up like there was pickle relish in her glass instead of grape juice, and her eyes were at half-mast.

How, Drakken wondered, could she not be happy with the best New Year's Eve party ever going on all around her? He felt his ears droop. He sure wished Shego could become happy as easily as he did. Then they would both feel so much better…

Well, maybe he could help. Drakken bounded over to her side, dodging his henchmen's burly elbows and nearly tripping over their huge feet. Even as menacingly meaty as he was, he always felt downright small next to them.

"Shego?" he asked her in his happiest voice. "Would you like to make a New Year's Resolution, too?"

Shego gave him her little smirk. "And what if I say 'no'?"

Drakken felt the blueness drain from his face. _No_? That would spoil everything if she said no, and there was so much great everything that he didn't want spoiled! "You can't, Shego!" he barked at her. It sounded a little too nasty, so he grinned even bigger and leaned even closer, rocking up on his toes in the hope that he could transfer some of his overwhelming excitement to her. "Come on, make a resolution! Pretty ple –"

Shego cut him off with a squawk, which surprised Drakken. Shego was calm and matter-of-fact – if she squawked, something must be horribly wrong! Panic rushing in his ears, he whipped his head up, to the left, to the right, then finally down – and saw his glass tipped almost upside-down, dribbling sparkling grape juice all down the front of Shego's jumpsuit.

"Oh, no!" Drakken gave a squawk of his own and jumped back, dropping his glass entirely. And after he'd done such a good job pouring all the juice, too! Shego's eyes were drilling into him with annoyance, and it felt like the bottom fell out of his tummy.

No, no, no. Drakken shook his head frantically, jittering his hands around until he could figure out what else to do with them. There had to be some way to fix this, to make it better, to clean it up –

A napkin! He felt his ponytail spring up as he tore around the kitchen, boots slipping on the linoleum. All he had to do was get Shego a napkin, and then everything could be okay again.

There weren't any napkins in sight, though, so Drakken snatched a paper towel and hurried back to his sidekick at maximum speed. Shego yelled something at him, but he couldn't hear what it was over the pounding in his ears. Had to fix this, had to let Shego see that he wasn't some clumsy loser…

That thought hurt too much to finish, so Drakken thrust the paper towel at Shego and stopped thinking it. "Here," he panted. He knew better than to try to clean her off himself. Shego wasn't real big on being touched. He understood that – his nervous system was very sensitive, too.

"Ye-ah, that worked." Shego's voice was as hard and sarcastic as ever, and so were her eyes. She wasn't looking at the spreading stain on her jumpsuit anymore, though. She was looking over Drakken's shoulder, at the long chain of paper towels starting at their rack on the other side of the room and ending with the crumpled-up one he had in his hand.

Oh. Drakken felt his ears burn. He must have forgotten to _tear off one piece_, the way Shego was always telling him to, the way he tried really, _really_ hard to remember to. It was one of the things that was just way too easy to forget when his brain was in panic mode. Maybe he should resolve to be calmer this year, too.

Resolutions! Right! That was how this whole mess started, and now it was 11:59 and almost too late to make them!

Drakken gave Shego his biggest, most charming grin. _Please don't be mad at me, Shego. Oh, please_, he made his eyes beg her. If she got mad enough, she would be hurling plasma at him pretty soon, plasma powerful enough to eat right through him, not to mention dissolve through his clothes and leave him standing there in his underwear. It was a thought that brought the panic right back.

"So, have you chosen a resolution, Shego?" Drakken asked in the brightest voice he could manage. _Be nicer to Drakken_, he added in his brain, as if she could read his mind. Of course, Shego could do just about anything.

"I think so," Shego answered, ripping the paper towel away from its companions and pressing it to the front of her jumpsuit. She sounded perfectly calm, and that wound Drakken up even tighter.

"Well?" he demanded, arms pressed to his sides in an attempt to keep some of the bubbly excitement in.

"How about I resolve not to kill you this year?" she suggested. Her teeth clenched down so hard Drakken was surprised she could even _breathe_, much less talk.

Hmm. Drakken paused to roll that around in his brilliant mad-scientist mind. Well, that probably _could_ be considered being nice to him, though he would have preferred something a little more –

"Ten!" A voice blared from the TV and interrupted his musings. "Nine! Eight!"

Drakken squinted at the TV, marveling at these strange tiny people who didn't know how to count forward. Had they not been to kindergarten yet? Or maybe their brains jumbled numbers up sideways and backwards the way his did with letters. And words –

"Seven! Six!" the people kept yelling, as a large ball fell from the air and plummeted toward them. Oh. Right. The New Year's Countdown. Heh-heh. He remembered now.

"Five! Four!" The ball was getting closer and closer to the ground. Some of those people had better move, Drakken thought, or they were going to be crushed when the ball's great mass landed on top of them, especially considering how much velocity it had gained during its long fall –

Ooh! Drakken let out an evil chortle as his mind began to spin. Surely there was a world domination idea in there somewhere!

_Let's see, I'll need an awful lot of metal…_

"Three!"

…_construct some very large balls…_

"Two!"

…_very long cables to suspend them from…_

"One!"

"Happy New Year!" Drakken cried in delight, clinking his glass against the nearest henchman's. What better way to start the year than with a brand-new evil scheme? He threw back his head and chugged all the juice in one big, impressive gulp like the tough supervillain he was.

Stifling a burp – that would be undignified – Drakken glanced out the window at the ocean, crashing into the cliffs the same way it had last year. That always frustrated him. Why didn't the moon turn green and the tides go crazy and comets shoot across the sky at midnight on New Year's Eve? He liked things to stay the same, be scientific and dependable, for most of the year, but on holidays, everyone and everything needed to be excited with him. After all, you would have thought nature would want everyone to know that it was a brand-new year, just in case they didn't have calendars or TV sets or just forgot the date every now and then the way some people did. Like him.

_After the New Year's, the truce is over. _A voice that sounded very much like his own rang in Drakken's ears. _I'm going to open up a bag of freak on all of you!_

Normally, the reminder of his evil words would have brought on a villainous hand-rubbing – at the very least – but Drakken felt himself frown instead. He wasn't sad, not exactly. But for some reason, calling off the truce with Kim Possible and that kid who maybe wasn't as stupid as he looked didn't make him feel very happy. After all, he and the buffoon were Snowman Hank Buddies now.

They weren't bad kids. Not at all. In fact, Drakken thought, maybe someday, once he'd conquered the planet and they'd accepted that and were no longer trying to stop him, they could all be friends. If he hadn't dropped them in magma by then.

_Brrr_. Drakken reached up and wrapped his arms around his shoulders, which suddenly felt just a little bit chilly. Stupid henchmen never turned the heat up high enough.

Besides, if _he_ was the one to break the truce first, _he_ wouldn't get hurt. Drakken grimaced down at the angry-looking sea.

Snowman Hank would have to understand.

**()()()()()**

**Her  
**

"_What are you saying?" Death Star bellowed at the top of his lungs. His fetid breath washed over the cowering henchman at his feet. "You dare to question your ruler and master?"_

"_F-f-forgive me, Your Eminence," the toady sniveled. "I was simply w-wondering if it might be a better idea to test the Disintegrator in a deserted area where you would attract l-l-less attention…."_

_His voice trailed off as the superweapon's spiked tip landed inches from his nose. "You know the rules," Death Star snarled. "And for breaking them, I will test the Disintegrator on _you_, instead!"_

_"Nooooooo!"_

"Give me a break," Kim Possible muttered to herself as she slapped the paperback book closed so hard it jiggled her mattress. "_So _lame."

First of all, the bad guy was named _Death Star_. That in itself didn't bother her –villains, she had learned over the years, were all about cornball clichés, especially ones that made them sound dangerous. It was the fact that no one else in the novel seem to notice or care how moronic it was that made her snort in disbelief.

Not to mention the fact that this guy knocked off his own subordinates for reasons as flimsy as the one she'd just read about. Kim's enemies yelled at their henchmen all the time, ranted about their incompetence, shook their fists and threatened to fire the whole pack of them. But she'd _never_ faced one who would kill a flunky as matter-of-factly as most people would swat a fly.

She hoped with all her heart that she never would.

Not that Kim had been expecting literary greatness. _The Adventures of Jess Shekan, Teen Heroine _was just something she'd picked up from the library on Friday, a little "light reading" for the three-day weekend that lay ahead. She'd figured if anyone could relate to Jess, it would be her. Action, drama, the dangers of exploding things mixed with the dangers of asking someone like Josh Mankey to the school's Sadie Hawkins dance – that was her life every day.

Jess didn't just have cheerleading moves on her side, though. She had superhuman strength, supermodel looks, and an absolutely perfect family, right down to a couple of rosy-cheeked little brothers who never so much as put a toy snake in her closet, much less rewired her alarm clock to go off at 3 AM on a Saturday. _Puh-leeze. _

There was something else bugging Kim about the book, too, something that stemmed off her first two qualms, but that she couldn't quite put her finger on. And before she could try to figure it out, there was a knock on her bedroom door.

"Kimmy?" a voice called. "It's Dad."

Kim rolled over onto her stomach and dangled one arm listlessly over the side of her bed. "Come in."

The door squeaked open, and Dad poked his gray-streaked head inside. "You know," he said, "I was just thinking that if you wanted a cup of hot chocolate, I could fire up our eggnog-making machine and see if it knows how to make cocoa, too."

_Yikes. _That sounded like the kind of thing that could end in disaster, even with Jim and Tim gone for the afternoon (sledding with Mom, the lucky twerps, Kim thought somewhat bitterly). "Um – no thanks, Daddy," she said, in as bright a voice as she could manage. "Maybe after Ron and I go sledding."

_If _they went sledding at all.

"Oh, okay." Dad looked a little disappointed, but he nodded. "If you change your mind, I'll be downstairs in the kitchen." His voice went cheerfully up at the end of that sentence, the way it always did when he was trying to get one of the kids psyched up about something. It was almost kind of cute, in a middle-aged-dad way.

Kim sighed and picked up the square gray phone she'd had within arm's reach all day. "I am so bored," she moaned.

No sooner was the last syllable out of her mouth than the phone jittered itself with a piercing ring that jump-started her heart. Kim whisked it up to her ear and punched the TALK button. "Hi, Ron," she said.

Ron didn't ask how she knew it was him. That was just the way things had always been with them, at least as far back as Kim could remember them. Mrs. Stoppable had joked once that the two of them had some kind of sixth sense that alerted one of them to when the other was trying to contact them. At least, Kim was pretty sure it had been a joke. Mrs. Stoppable could be a little out-there sometimes.

"Okay, so if my essay only has 383 words, can I add 'The End' and just call it good?" Ron asked. "'Cuz there's no way I'm spendin' another second on this – and I'm really not that sure of any other way to add two more words and still have it, you know, make sense."

Kim rolled that around in her brain for a moment. If it were any teacher other than Mr. Barkin, she would have told Ron it was probably fine. But the ever-present substitute had a reputation for never bending any of his five thousand rules even the slightest bit, and he certainly wouldn't make an exception for _Ron_.

It wasn't really Ron's fault that he wound up with an extra assignment to do over the long weekend. He'd been walking backward in the hallway with her on Friday afternoon, yammering gleefully about how great it was that they'd get Monday off from school. "Martin Luther King, Jr. Day rocks!" Ron had hollered, just as Kim had spotted Mr. Barkin step out of the classroom and hood his always-serious eyebrows in her friend's general direction. Before she'd had a chance to warn him, though, the teacher had planted a big, beefy hand on Ron's shoulder and assigned him a 385-word essay on Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.

"He was a great man and an important civil rights leader!" Mr. Barkin had bellowed over Ron's protests. "Not just an excuse to go sledding, Stoppable!" Kim had just stood there, shaking her head as her vision of sledding with Ron had grown smaller and smaller.

"Well – you know how Mr. Barkin is about things like this," Kim finally said. "And you're in enough trouble with him as it is."

She could almost _feel_ Ron rolling his eyes. "Oh, don't I know it," he snorted. "What does the dude have against me, anyway?"

Kim hesitated for a moment. Mr. Barkin, she knew, thought Ron was a slacker, and he wasn't exactly wrong. Ron could be lazy and a procrastinator – "underachieving," their math teacher had called it. But once he made up his mind to do something, he threw his whole heart and soul into it, something Mr. Barkin never seemed to see. That was hard for a best friend to watch.

"I think Mr. Barkin has some…personal issues," Kim said carefully. "And it couldn't hurt if you turned in your homework earlier."

_Ugh. _She crossed her fingers that Ron wouldn't take that the wrong way.

To Kim's relief, her friend gave a triumphant chuckle. "Yeah, but that's in the past now. This essay – this is going to blow him out of the water, baby!"

There was a muffled squeal in the background that Kim presumed was Rufus adding his agreement.

"So – read it to me real fast," she said, switching the phone to her other ear, unable to keep a grin off her face. Maybe she and Ron would be able to hit Mt. Middleton, Jr., as he'd dubbed the hill behind his synagogue, before the sun went down after all.

"Okay, here goes." Ron cleared his throat with great importance, then forced his still-changing voice down as low as it could go and began to read. "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a monk who lived in Germany during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He is most famous for starting the Protestant Reformation. Some of his great theological works include -"

The sledding vision had shrunk down so far, Rufus wasn't even visible anymore. Kim pressed her hands to her aching temples and resisted the urge to throw the phone across the room. "Um, Ron?" she began in the ultra-quiet voice that always snapped him to attention.

"Yeah, KP?" She could hear the sloppy smile in Ron's voice, and she hated to stomp on it. But Mr. Barkin would probably skin him alive if he came in and read that report tomorrow.

Kim hauled in a deep, calming breath. If Mrs. Stoppable was right about their "special connection" maybe it would extend to them both. "I think you might possibly have Martin Luther King, Jr. mixed up with plain old Martin Luther."

There was a long silence at the other end of the line before she heard Ron chuckle sheepishly. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Yeah, I was wondering how he wound up leading the Civil Rights movement four hundred years later." The chuckle gave way to a growl. "Man, this means I have to write another essay! I tell ya, KP, that Barkin is a sick man! Sick in his mind! Sick in his soul, if he has one!"

"I don't think he's exactly evil, Ron," Kim argued. "He just – overreacts is all."

She could picture Ron's careless shrug. "Yeah, well, thanks to his 'overreactions,' I'm writin' about a holiday instead of enjoying it! That sounds pretty evil to me!"

Kim felt Ron's frustration seething through the phone line, and it sent a pang of sympathy through her. "Look – Ron – do you want me to come over and help you with your research?" she asked.

"Ya mean it?" Ron squawked.

"Of course I mean it," Kim replied. "If we were in sledding together, we're in this together, too."

Besides, right now _anythin_g would beat sprawling on her bed, reading junky teen novels. Especially if "anything" involved Ron.

"Thanks, KP." Ron's voice sounded relieved, maybe even a little bit touched. "You're a lifesaver."

"Hey, no problem." Kim cast an ironic glance down at _The Adventures of Jess Shekan, Teen Heroine_. "It's what I'm here for." _Superpowers or not_, she added firmly to herself.

Ron ended the conversation in his usual way – by hanging up – and Kim flung herself off the bed and headed downstairs to grab her coat. Her mind was still trying to wrap itself around Ron's declaration of Mr. Barkin's wickedness.

She hated the way the teacher treated Ron, and there were times she wanted to burst out with "Where in the world did you get a teaching degree, anyway?" Still, if anyone knew "evil" when she saw it, it was Kim. And giving homework over a holiday weekend – even unfairly – seemed like nothing compared to locking them in titanium boxes and dropping them into chasms filled with sharks and squid, the way Drakken had only last week.

Of course, Kim thought as she wriggled one arm into the sleeve of a purple fleece jacket, Drakken wasn't always that bad. Back around Christmas, when he'd been overwhelmed by the holiday spirit, she'd even discovered he could look like a halfway decent person when he smiled. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen Mr. Barkin smile a real smile.

Kim paused in tugging on a boot and nodded to herself. She'd finally realized exactly what it was about _The Adventures of Jess Shekan_ that made her hackles go up just a smidge. Every character in there had been either a perfectly perfect example of a good person or a perfectly awful example of a bad person. There was no room for a slacker of a kid who was still the most loyal friend anyone could possibly have or a slightly insane teacher or an arch-nemesis who burst into tears when his doom rays were destroyed. No room for _people_.

She knew her mother would probably have been annoyed by it, too. For some reason, that was a good feeling.

**()()()()**

**A/N: Using "The End" as the two words in an essay is probably an old joke, but I first heard it in the first Baby-Sitters' Club book. And, yeah, Ron did quote from "It's a Wonderful Life -" just because he's awesome like that.**


	3. This January

**Him**

Dr. Drakken didn't see the gigantic fist aimed squarely at his gut until it was too late. It hit him, sudden and so hard that he was sure it was going to go straight out the other side. For a foggy second that almost didn't seem real, Drakken found himself thinking, numbly, that maybe Mother was right. Maybe he _could_ use a little more meat on his bones.

Then his internal organs folded like pancakes and his knees buckled, and the whole world seemed to tilt as he toppled forward. Drakken didn't know if there would be anything waiting to catch him when he landed – _if_ he landed; he felt strangely suspended in midair, as if he'd been hit with his own Gravitomic Ray – and he almost didn't care. The terribleness of the pain – the painfulness of the terrible – Ohhh, it was bad. Very bad. His eyes burned with reflexive tears that he didn't dare let fall.

Drakken heard a muffled thump as his body connected with a soft mound of snow, but he didn't feel it. His lungs were burning too badly for him to feel _anything_ else, except the panicked pounding of his heart way up in his head.

_Can't breathe. Oh, no, oh, no, no, oh no, why can't I breathe? _Either his plan to suck all the oxygen out of the Earth's atmosphere had wound up working after all, or something was horribly wrong with his respiratory system – either way, the air wasn't coming, no matter how much he gasped for it. _I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die oh please don't let me die._

Drakken wrapped his arms around his throbbing belly and squeezed hard, trying to make it stop hurting, trying to force up air toward his lungs. He couldn't die, not here, all alone, in the snow, with his secret Alpine lair exploding behind him. But his chest felt tight and his head felt light, and people probably wouldn't even be able to tell that he was dangerously close to death because his skin was already blue and maybe he really would die right here all alone in the snow –

_Shego. _Drakken wheezed in through his nose, but the air heaved uselessly in his chest. Where was Shego? He needed Shego. She would know what to do; she _always _knew what to do.

He scanned the mountain around him for a flash of green-and-black, but all he saw was white. Grayish-white sky. Bluish-white snow. No color at all.

And then suddenly, there _was _color, lots of it, right in front of Drakken, bleary in his oxygen-deprived state. Three big guys, with serious eyes and mean sets to their chins, stood towering over him. The colors of their hair were different, and so were the colors of their skin, but they were all the same size – a head taller and probably twice as wide as him, with hands as big as Drakken's whole _head_. Those hands were clenched up into fists, like they were getting ready to severely injure somebody.

Or just had.

Drakken narrowed his eyes at them, hoping he looked menacing even with his mouth lolling open in a desperate attempt to just _breathe_. He couldn't let them see that he was scared. Check that, he couldn't _be _scared, period. He needed to be – angry, the way Shego always seemed to be at times like this. No tears had ever glittered in her eyes, not even when Kim Possible said hurtful things or foiled their (foolproof!) plots for the eighty-gazillionth time.

He cut that thought off in mid-sentence, because it always led to other thoughts, nasty ones that whispered that he was just a big wimp and wouldn't shut up even when he begged them. If he needed to be angry, he could be angry. He was Dr. Drakken, and ferocious, villainous anger was one of his specialties.

After all, these men – who seemed vaguely familiar, though Drakken was sure he'd never seen them before – had showed up at his lair and, instead of greeting him or even demanding his surrender, had started chucking explosives everywhere. A bomb had smashed into one his lasers – the DRD6000, which he'd always been kind of fond of – and the whole place had blown sky-high. He'd had to crawl to the emergency exit on his hands and knees through blinding smoke, shivering and shaking and wondering why Shego wasn't stopping them. Just remembering it now gave Drakken shivers down the back of his spine.

And then they'd _hit _him – as hard as they could with no warning – probably left a permanent dent in his midsection – and to top it all off, they had the nerve to dress in _blue _uniforms, when they obviously had no right to wear his favorite color. They were – they were – Drakken scrambled around in his brain for a sufficiently nasty word – _defiling _it, that's what they were doing! He snuffled and ran a hand under his nose, which was starting to drip in a very un-villainous manner.

One of the hulks in blue leaned toward him, and Drakken felt himself shrink back out of sheer survival instinct. There was something hard in this guy's eyes, sort of like what he always saw in Dementor's or Monkey Fist's, but different. Colder. Calmer. Even meaner. It sent a shiver through his already-aching stomach.

Were these guys policemen? Global Justice agents? No, Drakken could make out bright yellowy-orange stripes that stretched from their shoulders and waists to crisscross at their chests, like something out of _Star Trek_. Next to the crisscrosses, he saw a lighter blue circle with the letters _TI _scribbled across it in red.

Drakken felt his sweaty forehead wrinkle. TI? Titanium? No, chemical symbols only had their first letters capitalized – then again, maybe those guys didn't know that. They didn't seem too bright. He wondered if they could even speak.

No – no – no – wait a minute. Drakken felt something snap into place in his brain, which _must_ have been brilliant to realize this in the middle of his battle for oxygen. Team Impossible! They were some sort of crime-fighting organization, a big-time group who charged money for saving people or foiling amazingly evil plots. Drakken gurgled in a mouthful of air, then almost choked on it as he realized something.

_Money_. Somebody was going to _pay _these jerks for beating him up and destroying his lair! Probably somebody in that way-too-cute little Swiss village at the bottom of the mountain. . . . oooh, the thought made Drakken's blood boil. If only he could stand up –

But he couldn't, not even when one of them slung a rope around him and tied him like he was some kind of malfunctioning mechanical cow, and the other two yanked him to his feet and gave him sneers that he was too weak to return just yet. Once they took their hands off, though, Drakken felt his knees crumple again and he fell back into the snow.

Why was Team Impossible here, anyway? Drakken wondered as he brought a hand down to his chest to make sure his heart was still beating. They were acting like they were his arch-nemesises or something, and he already _had_ an arch-nemesis, thank you very much! Kim Possible had destroyed his lairs more times than he could count, but he'd always given her a reason to. She at least knew how to make conversation and not just blow things up and hurt people.

Drakken felt his chin crumple into lines. He was breathing a little easier now, but his belly hurt more than it had last Thanksgiving. Not to mention the fact that his nervous sweat was starting to freeze and leaving him with chattery teeth. He didn't want to cry in front of these guys, but he was just so miserable and Shego still wasn't anywhere in sight –

But someone else was, somebody close to his size, maybe even smaller. It was a skinny teenage boy, whose messy blond hair and freckles made him look familiar without really standing out in Drakken's mind. His eyes looked confused and surprised, with nothing even close to a nasty glitter. Drakken's chest loosened a bit more, and for an awful, undignified moment he wanted to cry out, "Get me away from these guys! I think they're going to kill me!"

He might have, too, because he'd suddenly realized that it was hate he was seeing in Team Impossible's eyes. But before he could, his eyes caught on the person standing right next to the blond kid. She was shorter, red-haired, with big green eyes full of – of – of –

Drakken's heart sank down to his sore middle. His _true_ arch-nemesis was looking at him with what could only be described as pity.

Well, it was better than hatred, he guessed, but somehow it still hurt. It made him feel small and helpless, like maybe he was going to disappear entirely.

Why did Kim Possible always have to show up when he was humiliated? Drakken thought wildly. And why wasn't she gloating about it? That hurt, too, but he was used to it. If she had to look at him with something that was so far from the respect and fear he longed for, it could at least be something familiar.

One of the Team Impossible thugs gave Drakken's elbow a rough yank, and he felt every muscle in his body bunch up in fear. _Don't do that!_ he would have yelled if he had the breath to. _Haven't you hurt me enough?_

Evidently not, because the creep kept tugging at his elbow until he was towing Drakken across the snow on his knees, which felt like little blocks of ice under his lab coat. He needed to run, to fight, to show them he wasn't just some wimpy coward, but he felt exhausted, like he'd run a marathon instead of just taking a punch in the gut, and the rope that held him was sturdy and strong. Drakken did manage to give his legs a defiant kick, but even that sucked his breath away, squeezed pain around his tummy, and threatened to bring his grilled-cheese sandwich back up.

_No, it's okay, Drakken._ He took a couple of slow, careful breaths, and wondered if the shaking – inside and out – would ever stop. _Shego escaped. She'll come bust you out of jail. Then you can move on to your next plain – maybe the Cybertronic technology one you were thinking of. Won't that be fun? _

It _would_ be fun, and Drakken was almost smiling when the Team Impossible goon dragged him past Kim Possible and her buffoonish friend. Her eyes were still strangely soft, and she leaning forward slightly, like any second now she was going to put her hand on his forehead. Drakken grimaced and growled and turned his head away from her so she couldn't.

Why couldn't she be upset that she hadn't been the one to capture him and thwart his fiendish scheme? That would have given _him _the chance to gloat, and that was one thing that always soothed his ego whenever he felt that helpless feeling creeping up on him.

Wait a minute! Drakken felt another smile, a sinister one, creep across his face. Just because Kim Possible wasn't upset about it right now didn't mean she couldn't _get _upset about it. Especially not if – he couldn't resist a triumphant chortle – he helped.

Drakken jerked his head back to face his foe, barely even caring about the cool alliteration he had just thought, and lifted his chin as high as he could. He gave Kim Possible his evilest grin, lowered his eyebrow menacingly, and spit his words and his fear and his confusion at her.

"Ha! Kim Possible!" Drakken gasped. "You think you're all that… but they _are_."

**Her**

Kim Possible wasn't used to standing passively with her mouth gaping open, and she didn't like it. But watching her arch-enemy get punched in the gut so hard that she felt it in her own was strangely like witnessing someone breaking into her locker.

It wasn't like she was possessive of Drakken or anything. She certainly knew she wasn't the only one to foil his schemes. Global Justice appeared in the paper every now and then for stopping him, after all, and even Ron had destroyed one of the mad scientist's wacko machines when he'd been searching for Kim's lost library book a few months ago.

Still, it was sort of creepy to realize that these guys had had Drakken on the run before she and Ron were even halfway up the mountain. Kim had suspected that Team Impossible owned all sorts of fancy computers and crime-detecting satellites, but the idea that they could outdo Wade bordered on scary.

Drakken collapsed to the ground like he'd been shot, face the same bluish-white color as the piled snow that caught him. Even from ten feet away, Kim could hear him gasping for breath, and she found herself strangely tweaked. She'd come to feel sort of responsible for Drakken lately, and seeing him take such a hard hit made her flinch involuntarily.

Ron seemed to agree her with her. He'd shut up about the bag lunches and was staring at the scene with his eyes and mouth in identical ovals, obviously horrified by such wickedness. It struck Kim as strangely sweet.

Crash Cranston evidently did _not _agree, however. Crouching down next to Drakken, who seemed to be sinking into the snow even as Kim watched, he threw a rope around him and looped it up as casually as if he were tying his shoe. Kim had figured out after about three missions that Drakken wasn't the towering, big-shouldered man she'd thought he was at first, but he looked extra small next to these guys.

Okay, so she had to admit the three of them weren't terrible at the whole crime-fighting gig. They'd done it quickly and efficiently – maybe _too_ efficiently.

Dash and Burn scurried over to join their teammate, who greeted them with a thumb's-up and a cold smile that made Kim's hair stand on end. All three of them flexed their muscles and struck Superman-like poses, but they didn't look heroic at all. They looked like bullies. The memory of Rip Snorter and his buddies cornering Ron on the playground burned into Kim's brain, and she narrowed her eyes at Team Impossible.

_You didn't need to do that, guys! _she wanted to cry out at them. Drakken had still been trying to keep up his bragging as he'd slunk out of his lair, but Kim knew that _he_ knew that he'd already lost. There was fear in the way his ponytail shook between his shoulder blades, in the way his eyes darted every direction except forward. It sure didn't take a punch in the gut to take him down then. Shego was generally the real threat by that point, but she was nowhere in sight. She'd probably made her getaway while Drakken was walking straight into Crash's fist – and it sure didn't look like anyone was about to go after her.

And they'd called _her _the amateur crime-fighter. If Team Impossible's idea of "professional" revolved entirely around fists and bombs, she'd rather stay an amateur her entire life.

A wheeze broke into Kim's thoughts, and she glanced down to see Crash tugging Drakken away from his lair. Her foe's spiky dark hair was damp with sweat and hanging down into his eyes, eyes that narrowed on her like _she _was the one on her way to prison.

"Ha! Kim Possible!" Drakken gasped. "You think you're all that – but they _are_."

_Thank you, Drakken. _So _what I needed to hear right now._ All traces of sympathy skittered from Kim's brain. If he hadn't immediately doubled over and moaned in agony, she might have considered giving him a little whack up the side of his head herself.

Until she met Crash Cranston's eyes and read pure contempt in them. Kim wasn't sure whether it was for Drakken – or for her – but she knew that, no matter how well Team Impossible had done their jobs, she could never be like them.


	4. Last February

**~And now the long-awaited continuation. . . you _were_ on the edges of your seats for three years, right? ;) Seriously, guys, major thanks to anyone and everyone who's stuck with me on this. And if you're new - welcome aboard! I hope you like. This is a "fluffy" chapter, but it will get intense pretty soon.~**

**Him**

Dr. Drakken leaned in to examine the plant for the 618th time since he'd woken up that morning. After all, today was Valentine's Day and this was for one of the most special people in his life. Everything had to be perfect, especially since it had been so hard to find the right bouquet for Shego.

Drakken grinned to himself. He liked that word, "bouquet." It sounded sort of French, and saying it made him feel very sophisticated, like Senior. Anyway, it had taken him a long time to find the right one to give Shego. He always saw people giving each other roses on Valentine's Day, the very pretty red kind that smelled like that perfume Mother wore sometimes. But he'd read on the Internet the other day that red roses symbolized love - like, the mushy, kissy-face kind. Ick. He loved Shego, but not like that.

The website had also talked about how different kinds of flowers represented different things, like chrysanthemums meant friendship and tulips meant you were famous and forget-me-nots meant – du-uh – not to forget. But Drakken couldn't find any that symbolized being a great evil sidekick, and he'd started to worry, maybe even panic a little. He absolutely, positively had to get Shego something for Valentine's Day to show how much he appreciated her!

Sure, she was lippy and sarcastic a lot of the time, but she could be nice, too – a couple of weeks ago she'd told him that his teleporter scheme was pretty darn smart, and he'd thought his chest was going to burst with pride. Just yesterday, they'd had fun together reading the jokes in the latest issue of _Reader's Digest_. Shego read them all in such a funny, dry voice that his sides hurt from laughing so much by the time she was done.

And even though the way she never got excited with him drove Drakken crazy, sometimes it was comforting. Like last week when he'd nicked himself on the broken pieces of his latest success-impaired Doom Ray and was sure he was going to bleed to death, Shego had just cleaned it with some stingy stuff and put on a Band-Aid on it and told him he was going to be just fine, so he could stop whining about it already. Seeing that she was able to be calm about it had somehow made his heart stop pounding quite so hard.

Besides, if he hadn't gotten Shego flowers, who would? She never talked about her family. Maybe she had a really tiny one, with just a mother and a slightly insane cousin, the way he did. Or maybe she didn't have one at all, and that almost made him cry to think about it. She had friends, but they were the kind you talked to at villains' conventions, not the kind of best-best friend who gave you presents. That, Drakken knew, was up to him.

Then a brilliant idea had jumped into his mind, because, as a supergenius, he had the kind of mind that just _overflowed _with brilliant ideas. Anyway, he'd found a plant that definitely symbolized evil and wickedness, _and _he'd managed to get his hands on one in time for Valentine's Day! Drakken grinned smugly at the pot in front of him.

The plant looked nice, too. All the important parts that needed to stay underground were safely covered with dirt – no, it was called soil, Drakken corrected himself. Much snazzier than plain old dirt. The leaves were nice and green. It was definitely healthy – would probably even flower in the spring if Shego took good care of it.

Speaking of Shego, where was she? Drakken glanced down at his watch and hissed through his teeth in frustration. How could it only be 8:55 in the morning? Why couldn't she have decided to come early today? He'd waited so long to give this to her – almost a whole week – and he'd managed to keep it a secret, too.

Shego was going to be proud of him, so proud and grateful. Drakken closed his eyes to imagine that, but the picture came in blurry. Because, now that he thought about it, he'd never seen Shego look like that before. It put a strange lump in his throat, like he had something stuck in there that he hadn't bothered to chew.

_Ding-dong_.

The doorbell! Drakken sprang up out of his chair, toppling head-over-heels across the table in the process. He hit the ground with a loud thump that rattled his teeth and took his breath away for a terrible second. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that Shego was here at long last and he could give her his present and then she would know that he really did care about her – oh, it was just all too thrilling! Drakken scrambled back to his feet, shook away the pain, brushed the Pop-Tart crumbs off his lab coat, and bounded over to the door. He even remembered to close the kitchen door behind him, so Shego wouldn't be able to see the plant right away, because without the element of surprise, giving someone a present would be no fun at all.

"Shego!" Drakken cried gleefully as he flung open the door. "Hi! Good morning! Happy Valentine's Day!" He heard his voice squeal up a bit at the end of each sentence, but he didn't care. There weren't enough exclamation points in the world for the excitement he was feeling.

Shego cocked an eyebrow at him, the way she always did when he did something stupi – uh, something not that smart. For a heartbeat of a moment, Drakken got nervous. What if he'd read his calendar wrong? Maybe Valentine's Day actually wasn't until next week and he'd have to go _another _seven long, agonizing days before he could give Shego her present!

But when Shego opened her mouth, all she said was, "Did you have coffee this morning, by any chance?"

Drakken glanced down at his feet, surprised by their jitteriness. "Just one cup!"

"Ye-ah." Shego's lips twitched as she let her shoulder bag fall to the floor. "Apparently that's one cup too many."

Well, humph! Drakken folded his arms across his chest and started to give Shego his best villainous glare, the one he'd been practicing in front of the mirror for just such occasions. Then he remembered Valentine's Day – and the plant on the kitchen table – and the possibility that Shego might have something for him, too. That brought his neck prickles down, and the more they went down, the more the corners of his mouth went up. It was an inverse relationship, right on his own body.

"Shego!" he cried, forcing his voice down from an excited squeal. "I have a _surprise _for you!"

Shego gave him her smirky little smile. "Ah, so that's what this is all about." Her voice was dry and calm, but there was nothing nasty in it right now. "Well, then, by all means – show me."

Drakken bounded toward the kitchen door on light, happy feet. His heart pounded out a joyous rhythm with every beat: _It's time, it's time, it's time to give Shego her present! She'll be, she'll be, she'll be, so very happy with me!_

"Behoooooooooooollllllllllllddddddd!" Drakken boomed in his most impressive, look-at-this voice, the one he usually reserved for Doomsday devices and genius blueprints and inventions he was about to steal. But this was almost as important, so he made an exception. Flinging the door wide, he gestured to the plant sitting on the table and gave Shego a big grin, the one so big Mother always said she could see his molars.

He stopped and panted, because that "Behold" had just kind of kept going until he'd run out of air. As Drakken bent over and pressed his hands to his knees to try and catch his breath, he caught a glimpse of his sidekick's face. He waited for her eyes to get as big as two-hundred-milliliter beakers, for her mouth to stretch into a happy smile like his, for her to light up and squeal and tell him what a wonderful friend/evil employer he was –

Hmmm. Drakken frowned. Shego wasn't exactly doing what she was supposed to. Her eyes were wide, all right, but instead of turning up at the corners, her mouth sort of hung open a little like it was broken, before she twisted it up into a little knot on one side of her face.

That didn't look like an excited face. Or a happy face. Or a _wow-Drakken-how-nice _face. Drakken felt his ponytail droop down over his prickly shoulders.

"Well?" he finally blurted out, because there was an uneasy tingle spreading over his body and if he didn't say something, he just might combust. "Shego? What is it?"

Shego opened her mouth and gave a Very Large Sigh, the kind she usually reserved for when something had gone horribly wrong with their schemes. "It's…a Venus Flytrap," she finally said.

Was that a problem? Drakken folded his eyebrow at her and stuck out his lower lip, just a smidge. "Ye-es?" he asked, hearing his voice curl up a little in confusion. He hated it when that happened – made him sound like he was a sophomore in high school instead of the world's future ruler. "It's a plant, right?"

But Shego was looking at him like he was in preschool, and that didn't help anything. "Yeah, but the thing is, Doc –" she stabbed him with her eyes – "generally speaking, people don't give _carnivorous _plants on Valentine's Day."

Drakken felt heat rising to his ears, the pinkness that always came when he messed up and Shego made that _Drakken-why-did-you-just-DO-that _face. He had just now realized that the Venus Flytrap didn't smell so great, either. Not as bad as that super-stink chemical Kim Possible had knocked him out with once, but it definitely wasn't a rose. His view of the room constricted, and he knew his eyes were doing that bunchy thing they always did when he was trying not to cry.

"No, Shego, listen!" Drakken snatched onto every word he had in his head before they could disappear and leave him with just noises and frustration. "You see, I was doing research on flowers on the Internet and they were talking about different flowers that stood for different things like red roses meant love and white roses meant friendship and tulips meant you're famous but I couldn't find anything that symbolized the wonderful bond of evil between criminal mastermind and crafty sidekick!" He stopped to suck in a breath, because he suddenly realized he hadn't taken one for a very long time.

Shego waited, arms folded over her chest. Her eyebrows were pointed down like she was suspicious, but her eyes weren't as hard as they usually were. She was listening!

"So then I remembered Venus Flytraps and thought, _What could represent evil better than flesh-eating flora? _I got one for you and I know it doesn't look very nice right now but if you take really good care of it might grow flowers in the spring and then it'll be really pretty but still evil, sort of – " Drakken stopped himself before he could say "sort of like you." That might sound wrong, and his ears were pink enough already. "And anyway –" he coughed – "if you keep it in your quarters, you won't have to worry about bugs and such things when it gets warmer!" He flung his arms out to emphasize his conclusion and gave Shego a hopeful smile.

And she actually smiled back. "'Kay, you know what?" Shego crossed the room without tripping over a table leg or walking into a chair (he always envied her that quality) and smirked down at the plant. "That's actually sort of nice."

Drakken felt his jaw scraping the ground. "It is?"

"Yeah." Shego rolled her eyes, but she didn't look too annoyed. "It is."

"Did you hear the part where it would keep pests out of your room?" he asked joyfully, crowding right in next to her so she could hear him better.

Shego edged away from him, mouth twitching. "At least the insect kind," she whispered, and it sounded more like she was talking to herself than to him.

Drakken tilted his head to the side, then shrugged. She probably meant Commodore Puddles. Even though his dog's potty-training was progressing quite nicely, Shego still wasn't too crazy about him being in her room.

"So – do you _like _it?" he dared to ask.

Shego gave a shrug of her own. "I guess so. I mean, it's not like it's a hydrangea or anything, but it's the thought that counts, right?"

That did it! Drakken felt himself spring up on his toes as reliefitude washed over him. He was so _happy _now! Shego liked his gift and she'd said it was nice and oh wow it was just almost too good to be true.

"Oh, and by the way."

Drakken looked up just in time to see a little red package sailing toward him. He stuck his hands up in the air and caught it effortlessly. Okay, so maybe he fumbled it around in his hands a little bit, but he didn't drop it, and _that _was the important part.

The package, he could see now, was shaped like a heart and covered with that infernal shrink-wrap. On the front of the box, a little cartoon skunk was smiling at him, holding out strange-looking green plants with smell lines coming off them. "Stinkweeds for a stinker," it said.

For a moment, Drakken's smile wobbled. Strange sentiment, and not exactly the nicest – _oooh_, was that _chocolate _he was smelling? He turned the box over in his hands and found himself staring at a Nutrition Facts label.

He grinned so big it hurt his mouth. _Candy_! Shego had gotten him candy. Flowers were nice and all, but this – this was the best Valentine's Day gift he could ever get!

Drakken heard himself yip happily. Shego must have heard it, too, because she looked up at him and her lips did their almost-smile thing. "Happy V-Day, Dr. D," she said, voice still deadpan.

"Thank you!" he bellowed in reply. "Shego, thank you so much!"

Shego rolled her eyes again. "You're welcome," she said and walked off toward her special sidekick-quarters carrying her plant, the plant he got for her.

To get the shrink-wrap open, Drakken had to use both hands – and a few teeth – but it wasn't really _that _hard. If he wanted something bad enough, he could be pretty strong. He hoped someday that would help him in his quest for world domination. But, for right now, it was just enough to have chocolate.

He snatched three of the plumpest pieces out of the box, dropped them into his mouth, and took a huge, wonderful bite. Ohhhh – there was coconut in one of these. Peanut butter in another. And was that a hint of caramel in the third? Drakken closed his eyes to savor the delicious taste and tipped his head back in pure bliss.

Strange thing about those flowers, he thought as he chewed. All flowers belonged to the same scientific kingdom, and biologically speaking, they were quite similar. He was no botanist, but he was pretty sure they all reproduced the same way (or maybe there were two ways). Made their food in the same way. Had the same basic structures. What made one of them stand for love and another for fame and yet another for friendship?

Drakken shook his head to dismiss those tangled thoughts and swallowed his mouthful of chocolate. It felt gooey and comforting going down his throat. Well, whatever they symbolized, he'd felt very, very good when Shego had said the Venus Flytrap was nice. It had given him a warm little tingle in his chest, where he was used to feeling all nasty and itchy.

It made him feel like he'd done something good. Drakken wanted to hang onto that feeling, but he wasn't quite sure how.

Well, there were a few things he did know! He stood up and grabbed his mad scientist logbook, a pen, and a few more chocolates just for good measure. Opening the logbook to the first blank page, he wrote in his neatest printing, _Use stink bomb to SMELL the world into submission!_

Drakken tilted his head down at the page as he examined it. Yes, that was a brilliant idea. And with an idea that brilliant, world conquest would soon be within his grasp.

There was another discovery to write down, though. Drakken flipped the page over and stared at its white back, smooth except for the tiny dents that marked where he'd written on the other side. Fascinating.

Blah. He shook his head, hard, until stray strands of hair escaped from his ponytail and tickled the sides of his face. He was on a mission, and he couldn't let himself get distracted, even by something as amazing as the scientific effects of pencil on paper.

_HI DRAN GEAS!_ Drakken scrawled across the page in huge letters, the kind it would be impossible to miss when he was reviewing his logbook.

Huh. Was that spelled right? He wasn't sure.

_HIGH DRAIN GEEUHS! HYDRAANGEEAS?_

Grrgh neh. Whatever. Drakken clutched the pencil firmly, bent over the paper, and wrote in letters as small and neat and precise as he could make them.

_The flours Shego likes. Get them for her nxt V-Day. DON'T FORGET, DRAKKEN!_

Once he'd added a satisfactory number of exclamation points to the end of that sentence, Drakken sighed with contentment. And popped another chocolate into his mouth.

**Her**

_From humble beginnings, to the assassin's bullet that cut his life cruelly short, Abraham Lincoln's wisdom and integrity made him one of our finest, if not _the_ finest, president._

There! Kim Possible wrote the final word with a flourish and scanned her paper to double-check that she hadn't made any ferocious "write-o"s, as Ron called the written version of typos. None caught her eye.

The essay was a study-hall-rushed sloppy copy, but she'd managed to get her thoughts in order. She'd type it up as soon as she got home, proofread it, and by tomorrow morning she'd be ready to hand it over to the mercy of Mr. Barkin's red pin.

Not to mention his super-strict schedule.

Kim peered uneasily at the clock on the wall over Barkin's desk. 2:15. Already an hour and forty-five minutes from when it was due, so by tomorrow _morning_. . . Any essay that was _that_ late was a good candidate for an F, no matter how well-written it was – unless you had a good excuse.

Kim just hoped Drakken and Shego's latest caper qualified.

She glanced across the aisle at Ron to see how he was managing. From her seat, she was able to make out the words _George Washington:_

_Was a really cool dude_

_Father of our country_

_On the dollar bill_

_First in war, first in peace_

_And his teeth weren't really made of wood. That was just a nasty rumor._

Ron himself was gnawing on the eraser end of his pencil, occasionally tilting his head toward his pocket to get Rufus's input on something, scribbling down a sentence, and then resuming staring into space. Kim felt both a ripple of annoyance and a stab of sympathy.

The bell rang then, and Kim slipped her rough-draft essay into the green folder marked "History." Cradling it and her textbook to her chest, she tried to head for the door with dignity and avoid the mob scrambling to get out.

Somebody had beat it out of there so fast they'd even dropped a folder right in front of Barkin's desk. Kim sighed under her breath as she got closer and recognized Ron's overstuffed, every-subject folder, adorned with a doodle of Mary Gariana, the quadratic formula, and the words "Nacos rock!" She bent down to pick it up -

"Ah, Possible. Just the person I wanted to see."

Kim stifled a groan at the sound of Mr. Barkin's voice – as big and booming as Drakken's, only Barkin had the body to match. She turned to face the teacher, who was tucked neatly behind his desk, looking as square and militant as a Hummer. At 10:30 this morning, Kim had been glued to the wall of a mad scientist's lair while he paced the floor not five feet away from her, raving about how he was going to conquer the world and periodically shooting her a triumphant smile that was meant to make her feel like some eight-year-old pipsqueak trying out for the high-school cheer squad.

This was more intimidating.

Mr. Barkin nodded her forward with a curt "Possible," which did nothing to soften his drill-sergeant aura. Kim had seen quite a few poor little freshmen emerge from his office struggling against tears.

Kim slowly approached his desk, trying to ignore the fact he was nearly as tall sitting down as she was standing up. "Mr. Barkin," she began in her most respectful tone. "I can explain -"

"Then kindly do so!" Barkin snapped. "I trust you have a good reason why your American History 1000 curricular essay on the president of your choice is exactly -" he paused to consult the watch on his wrist - "one hour, forty-eight minutes, and thirty-three seconds late! Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. . ."

Kim cut _him_ off that time, as politely as she could. "Mad scientist threatening to flatten the nation's capital with a stink bomb," she reported, gathering up a smile and displaying it with as much wattage as sincerity could muster. Anything beyond that and she felt like Bonnie, sweet-talking her way to whatever she wanted.

A rare moment of surprise flashed in Mr. Barkin's eyes before he nodded as though that made perfect sense. "If it were anyone but you, Possible," he grunted, "I would flunk them just for saying that."

Kim wasn't sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment. She settled for a cautious "Thanks?" and held up her history folder. "But I've got the rough draft done, and I should have the finished product in first thing tomorrow." She forced her voice up, Dad-like, at the end of the sentence and watched Mr. Barkin's face carefully.

He almost smiled – or maybe it was a grimace. Hard to tell with Barkin. "Is that a guarantee?" he demanded.

Kim gave an automatic nod and was about to trace her fingers over her chest when the realization of just how unpredictable her schedule was slammed her in the ribs. Sure, she could have it in by morning – provided Duff Killigan didn't decide to ransack Cog Hill Country Club or Monkey Fist didn't get it into his head to bring the skeletons of prehistoric apes in the Museum of Natural History back to life.

"I'll do everything in my power," she finally said honestly. The thought of failure was one of the few things she couldn't handle.

Mr. Barkin jerked his chin in acknowledgment. "Fair enough. You have until the end of first period tomorrow." He folded his hands on the desktop and glanced at the door, and Kim knew she was free to go.

She smiled gratefully and began to edge away, mind spinning in a hundred different directions. Really, how could she be sure tomorrow wouldn't be like today? She hadn't even known _today_ would be like today. Kim stifled a sigh as the events that had lead her to miss first-through-third periods replayed in her head.

She'd been totally prepped for that history paper, knowing exactly what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it. Then Wade had beeped her with the news that Drakken had broken into a long-abandoned research lab in Washington D.C., and she'd had to grab Ron and jet. Literally.

Kim had managed to jot down a basic essay-outline on the plane, but foiling Drakken's latest goony plot kinda had to take priority once they arrived at his newest lair. The building looked cold and echo-empty and creepy – just the way Drakken liked them, with the ceilings a mile high, rust on every surface that could rust, and cobwebs on the ones that couldn't.

All thoughts of the Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation vanished, replaced by the instructions, _Scan the place for anything that might be scanning for _you_. Tread carefully to avoid setting off traps. Look for an entrance point._

Those first two weren't hard. Drakken had managed to reactivate the facility's security cameras _and_ attach them to motion-detecting laser cartridges, but he'd planted them parallel to each other like he always did. Kim popped up between them, then went into that duck-and-roll routine _she_ always did, leaving them to blast each other to bits. If Drakken hadn't caught on to that little move by now, she doubted he ever would.

The land around the lab wasn't rigged, either. Each tentative step Kim took yielded firm ground, not quicksand or the sink-and-click that would tell her she'd triggered something that would be bent on destroying her.

As for the entry point – hello, giant skylight? Once again, Kim was thankful for her archfoe's total cluelessness – the glass smudgy from years of not being clean, but unobstructed by guards or weapons, seemed to gleam a challenge at her.

And Kim Possible could never resist a challenge.

She slipped her gloved hand into Ron's clumsy paw, fired her grappling hook, and what seemed like seconds later, they were on the roof. If it had been Dementor or the Seniors they'd been sent to stop, Kim would have flung some of the baby powder Wade had given her around to rule out an invisible laser system. But one of those went for three thousand dollars at HenchCo, and that was a luxury Drakken couldn't afford.

Instead, she reached into her backpack and pulled out her dissolvant nail polish, painting the glass with it until she had a hole big enough for her and Ron to slip through. The grappling hook was shot again, and Kim made her way cautiously down its rope, into the lair of her nemesis.

A quick jolt of suspicion nagged at her brain. Leaving the skylight unguarded _was_ awfully clueless, even for Drakken. Most likely, she'd be greeted with a trap of some kind. Kim squinted down at the floor to be sure she wasn't about to land right over a shark tank, but it was as white and smooth as the ones in operating rooms. Either Drakken _was_ as dumb as he looked, or he was planning to attack from above.

Kim studied the wall on her left for any trapdoors a henchman with a knife could pop out of to slice her rope, searched the vast darkness on her right for the blinking lights of a robo-drone. Nothing.

Which probably meant Shego was lying in wait for her somewhere in the shadows. Kim dropped silently to the ground in her best ready-to-fight pose – legs coiled under her, one palm pressed flat against the floor, folding herself into invisibility.

And couldn't get back up.

Her left hand and both feet were stuck to the floor. For a best-case-scenario of a second, Kim considered the idea that Drakken might've planted wads of chewing gum in strategic points around his lair, but even Frugal Lucre wasn't _that_ cheap. She grabbed her left wrist and yanked on it, but the white smoothness held fast.

It _did_ twitch a little, jerking back and forth as she tried to twist her hand free, and now Kim could see that it wasn't even a floor at all. Something had been spread _over_ the entire floor, draped so tightly, you couldn't see where it ended or began. It looked like a long, silky bed sheet, or maybe a huge piece of -

Flypaper! Kim's heart sank into we're-in-trouble zone, a place she never let herself stay for very long.

Bracing her legs as far apart as she could get them to steady herself, Kim clamped higher on her arm and gave it a mighty heave with a hint of Mantis Kung Fu and every last ounce of her cheerleading strength.

For a fraction of a second, she was sure she could feel whatever freakish supervillain glue this was release her knuckles. Before she could even start to hope, however, her hand was forced back to the ground again and she was stumbling backward into a wall.

Kim froze, not out of fear but because every part of her that had even so much as brushed the wall had immediately fastened to it with a "shhhp" sound like a sick toiler plunger, leaving her nearly incapable of movement. She couldn't even turn her head to see what, exactly, she was sticking to – the entire back of her hair was caught, too, and Kim was pretty sure there was no way she'd be able to escape with her 'do intact.

"Ron!" she hollered up into the nothingness that held her very-likely-terrified friend somewhere. "Don't come down he -"

Too late. Ron plummeted from the sky like a broken parachute and landed belly-down right beside her. The hands and feet that seemed several sizes too big for him barely brushed the sticky goo, but it was enough to instantly fasten him to the floor.

A sinister laugh rumbled from the depths of the lair, as if it had been waiting for its cue. Annoyance bristled its way up Kim's backbone, the way it always did when she heard that too-big voice getting ready to gloat.

Drakken's shoulders and ears preceded him into the room. He wasn't a whole lot more gracefully-proportioned than Ron, actually. Light slowly washed over his face in a way that would have been ferociously creepy if he wasn't Drakken.

"A-ha! Kim Possible!" her nemesis boomed. His cave of a mouth was crimped into a smirk that looked unnatural on it. "You have fallen right into my trap!"

"What are you up to, Drakken?" Kim shot back with as much firmness as she could. Her heart started to sag, just a bit, at its edges. She _had_ fallen right into his trap. She'd been overconfident, cocky even, underestimated him.

Rather than answering, Drakken began to stalk slowly toward them in that way he probably thought made him look super-menacing. Kim wished he would just hurry up and do something stupid that would allow them to escape and save the world – she had an essay to write, after all.

Kim couldn't hold back a smirk of her own as Drakken's boots stomped right onto the massive sheet of flypaper. Wouldn't it be just like him to get stuck in the very trap he'd been bragging about?

But he kept coming, sliding smoothly – well, as smoothly as Drakken could do anything. He must have coated his boots with some kind of anti-bonding formula, Kim realized.

Okay, so this was a good day for him. That wasn't a very comforting thought.

Drakken finally came to a halt a mere four feet from Kim, and she rocked backward to widen the distance between them. Drakken wasn't especially big, but he had a large presence – not exactly an _intimidating_ one, but definitely one that got all up in your face and made itself impossible to ignore.

And then he stepped even closer. "I bet you'd like to know, wouldn't you?" Drakken hissed. He folded his glittering eyes down to slits. "Well, get this – in a matter of minutes, Washington D.C. will fall, and Dr. Drakken will bring the entire nation to its knees!"

"You know, technically speaking, nations don't have knees," Ron piped up from the ground.

Kim didn't even bother telling him to shut up. She forced an eye-roll, but inside her heart rate had gone up a couple notches from what Drakken usually brought on. Bring the nation to its knees by attacking the Capitol? That sounded like something some ruthless dictator would try – somebody who would actually knew how to conquer the world, not some big dweeb like Drakken.

Drakken arched his eyebrow so far Kim was sure part of it actually left his forehead. "Aren't you going to ask me how I plan to do that, Kim Possible?" he asked with what she knew was practiced coldness.

Kim rolled her eyes again. "Do I care?" she retorted with a scoff. She DID care – she cared _a lot_ – but one of the best ways to get an advantage over Drakken was to not react the way he wanted you to.

Sure enough, the mad scientist's eyes crossed and his mouth drooped like it was always did when something didn't go according to plan. "Well, fine," he sniffled, and for a second Kim thought he truly did sound hurt. "Be that way; I'm going to tell you anyway!" Kim fully expected him to add "Because I'm evil – so there!"

The smirk slipped into a sloppy grin, Drakken's big ol' mouthful of honkin' white teeth flashing in her face. He rocked up on his heels the way the Tweebs used to do when they were about seven and boomed, "Soon, Kim Possible, the entire nation shall crumble to the awesome power of my In-Crud-ible Stinktacular Flesh-Eating StenchNuke of Apocalyptic Nightmares!"

Drakken decided to punctuate that sentence with another demented laugh, which gave Kim the time she needed to dig through the layers of her foe's mad-scientist jargon, not to mention the stuff he'd just made up, to find his meaning. When she did, she had to bite back a laugh, from relief as much as anything else. That was _so_ vintage Drakken.

"You're going to stink-bomb the country into submission?" Kim questioned incredulously. She didn't have to fake the sneer that rose to her lips.

Drakken nodded smugly, but Kim could see a wisp of uncertainty in his eyes. For an instant, she was reminded of a little boy presenting his idea for a science fair project to a grouchy teacher, waiting to be told it was stupid.

Ron brought her back, of course, with a nervous squawk. "Does it really eat flesh?" he asked, voice cracking in that way Kim knew embarrassed him so much.

Drakken ignored that question, which answered it as far as Kim was concerned. "Behold!" he thundered, dragging the word several syllables past normalcy as he reached into his lab coat with a flourish and pulled out –

A perfectly round, shiny-black bomb approximately the size of Rufus, with a fuse that bore a striking resemblance to dental floss.

_Oh, get out!_

"_That_'s the Supercrud Stink Flesh-eater?" Ron gasped, sounding like he was trying not to give way to chuckles. He was jerking his body back and forth, probably attempting to get the mutant flypaper stuff to release its sticky hold on him, but only succeeding in looking like he was having a seizure.

"The In-Crud-ible Stinkacular Flesh-Eating StenchNuke of Apocalyptic Nightmares, yes," Drakken replied tightly. One of his infamous temper tantrums obviously lurked just below the surface.

Kim jerked a brow at the little pool ball of a weapon. "Kinda dinky, isn't it?" The sight of it had chased away anything even vaguely resembling fear.

Drakken smeared a hand down the entire length of his face, elongating it another two inches, Kim was sure. He took several more steps toward them, stretching his tiny legs as much as he could in an effort to achieve long, casual strides. By that time, he was close enough to raise warning bumps on Kim's arms, so close she could smell him.

Those were a couple of things Kim had learned over the course of the last few years: Most villains had extreme personal space issues, and they each had their own distinct odor. They didn't all reek of garlic and tobacco the way they did in books, either. Duff Killigan smelled like fresh-cut grass, Senor Senior, Sr. like expensive cologne, and Monkey Fist. . . don't even get her started on Monkey Fist.

Drakken's usual scent was a mostly-bearable blend of fourth-period chem lab and Snickers bars. But today, Kim noticed with a nose-wrinkle, he did _not_ smell so great, probably from building his stink bomb. She didn't even want to _know_ what THAT process had involved.

"Oh, you think you're a very clever girl, don't you, Kim Possible?" Drakken snarled, the words hissing out on hot, angry breaths. "Shego said the exact same thing." His voice went up to a nasally pitch that sounded nothing like Shego. "What do you plan to wipe out with that, Dr. D, a mouse hole?"

Kim gave the room another, more studious sweep, as her muscles stiffened into battle-readiness, like that was going to do a whole lot of good when she was frozen in a half-sit with her head glued to the wall. So far there hadn't been any sign of Shego, but half the time you couldn't see or hear – or smell – the girl until she was right on top of you. She'd rather face a hundred Drakkens than one Shego. At least with him, what you saw was what you got.

Even now, he was turning the bomb around and gesturing to a little knob on the back, as if relaying exactly how he wanted her to defeat him. "This is just the travel-sized-for-your-convenience model," Drakken explained gleefully. His fingers twitched excitedly over the knob, and Kim half-hoped he would accidentally flick it and leave his lair smelling like a Garlicholics Anonymous meeting for the next two years. "When I twist this knob, the Inc-Crud-ible Stinktacular Flesh-Eating StenchNuke of Apocalyptic Nightmares shall expand to a billion times its current dimensions!"

Kim pulled her thoughts from wondering he'd really just said "shall" in the 21st century to some quick mental math. That thing times a billion equaled not good. Not surrender-control-of-the-country bad, but D.C. could be facing evacuation, serious property damage -

"Okay, question," Ron butted in, and Kim knew it was killing him not to be able to raise his hand. "What if everyone just wears gas masks?"

Drakken chuckled with a sick satisfaction, as though he'd just been waiting for someone to ask him that. "They'll never get the chance," he bragged, each syllable higher and steeped with more excitement than the one before. "One whiff of this stuff, and all but the strongest-nostriled will be out for twenty-four hours!"

Drakken flung his long, gangly arms out like he was on Broadway, and Kim knew if anyone had been standing within several feet of him, they'd have gotten smacked in the face. As it was, he wobbled for a moment, and she briefly entertained the hope of him falling flat on his face and becoming every bit as stuck as she and Ron were.

Klutziness aside, he really _was_ on the ball today. And – strongest-_nostriled_? That was so weirder than the "shall."

Well, whatever. Kim focused her attention back on Drakken. Or as much as she could with him going off on a variation of the how-the-world-will-bow-before-me spiel that she'd _only_ heard about ten thousand times in the past year-and-a-half. She didn't especially care about Drakken's flights of fancy, except to prevent him from ever living them out. Which was why it was good to at least half-listen to them in case he let something useful slip.

"And once America falls, the rest of the world will soon follow!" Drakken was nearly squealing now. "You see, I will use the top-secret government technology stored right here in D.C - oh, there'll be precision-honed lasers and freeze rays and beams that turn steel into chocolate -" he paused to lick his chops - "to attack every other nation on the planet!"

Okay, _that_ upped the threat factor a few notches. Kim was hit with just enough fear to strengthen her determination. She was pretty sure there was _some_ gadget in her backpack that would help them escape, but she was careful not to even flick her gaze back that way to show she was considering it. She'd play to Drakken's ego, let him think he'd rendered her helpless. Eventually, he'd get tired of taunting her and leave, probably with the intention of returning to finish them off later.

Only they wouldn't be here.

Kim hadn't known it was possible for Drakken to get any nearer, but he took another step in their direction anyway. By now he was so close that she could feel the breaths that fanned his nose, steaming hot with anticipation, could hear the grind of his teeth as he shifted his jaw, could see his eyelashes.

_Aww, man – why do GUYS get all the good eyelashes?_

Drakken's bleary, baggy eyes were fringed with the kind of long, thick, dark eyelashes a pale-lashed redhead like Kim could only envy, and they curled in a way that half the girls at Middleton High paid mad cash on fancy wands to imitate. That was _so_ not fair to give a man, especially one with blue skin and a hairstyle that went out in the -

Kim gave every part of her body that _wasn't_ fastened to a surface of Drakken's lair a firm shake and let the thoughts roll off of her like she was made of Teflon. _Okay – keep it together. This is no time to be shallow._

Drakken continued his monologue, complete, of course, with dramatic full-body contortions and those elaborate hand gestures he really should've had patented. But all Kim could see were those curly little eyelashes, resting daintily against his cheeks, reminding her of the look Bonnie Rockwaller had spent hours practicing for picture day last fall. It was so completely _not_ villainous, the first real giggle she'd experienced in quite a while rippled up her throat and out her mouth.

The mad scientist stopped in the middle of explaining how the world's bakeries would soon be forking over their supplies of cookies and donuts, and his face went completely blank. He turned his gaze to Ron, drained for now of the ability to wrap the constant muddle in his head in evil. "Is she. . . why is she doing that?" Drakken stabbed a finger, which could have been borrowed from a Barbie, at Kim the way she had seen him point out machines that were on the fritz. "Should she be doing that?"

Those thick-lashed eyes blinked rapidly, like something out of a mascara commercial. Ron shrugged as best as he could glued horizontally to the floor. The total ridiculousness of the whole sitch made Kim spatter out another guffaw. The bonus of what that was doing to her nemesis's ego just tickled her even more.

Drakken evidently was _not_ tickled, because he took several uneasy steps away from her, eyes wary as a trapped cat's. Kim felt a sizzle of triumph flare in her chest that he was the first one to back down – and while she was pasted to the wall, at that.

"Laugh all you want, Kim Possible!" Drakken said, voice clawing at the edges of manhood. Villainy was obviously out of the question, even as his lips quavered upward into a smile that might have scared her when she was four and his eyes slit down into bloodshot dashes. _That_ would have been creepy if Kim hadn't remembered the supermodel-lashes framing them. At least he was far enough away that she couldn't SEE them anymore.

"The Capitol will crumble - " Drakken paused for a sec, the corners of his mouth reaching for his earlobes, obviously relishing the phrase - "before the wrath of Dr. Drakken within -" he hiked up his cobalt sleeve to examine the Smarty-Mart-off-brand watch sliding down a wrist that narrowed the relative sturdiness of his arm down to that bony little hand - "anywhere from ten to thirty-five minutes, depending on traffic." Drakken jutted the natural pout of his chin even farther at her. "And there's not a thing you can do about it, because you're stuck on spypaper!"

The last of the eyelash-induced snickers found their way to Kim's lips, and her eyes rolled almost of their own volition. "Spypaper?" she repeated in disbelief.

The precision-somber expression Kim recognized from fifteen years as a rocket scientist's daughter slid over Drakken's face. "Yes!" he cried, pitch reaching toward a happy shriek. He held his hands like stone statues on either side of his waist, fingers pointing toward the ceiling she'd just descended from. "You, see like flypaper -" He wiggled all the fingers on one hand at once, which was about the extent of Drakken's coordination. "Only -"

Kim didn't have to search far for the Drakken-getting-on-my-nerves groan. "We _get_ it, Drakken,"she informed him matter-of-factly. "It's just not funny."

The hand that had been poised for further explanation began to chop the air.

"Yeah, and -" Ron's face scrunched pensively, and Kim knew he would've been rubbing his chin in thought had his hands been free. "We're not really _spies_. More like crime-fighters."

That was Ron for you, always in the mood to argue semantics. Drakken's eyebrow shot up in a peak that he could have used as a weapon, and doubt once again flashed through his eyes, followed by the near-crazed frustration Kim knew so well.

The mad scientist's entire body sagged into his middle as if he'd been kicked in the gut, and noises only Drakken could make exploded from his hanging-open lips. "Yes, but – but – but – spy – fly – ggregh!" Drakken doubled up his fists and darted his angry glare in five different directions. "Does no one have a sense of whimsy anymore?"

It was all Kim could do not to laugh, watching him unravel like that. You never knew _what_ Drakken was going to say when somebody got him that riled up.

Probably a good minute passed before Drakken was able to pull the tattered threads of himself back into the picture of megalomania. "Whatever it's called, it's got you stuck fast, Kim Possible," he bragged. "You know, only a true genius could invent -"

Kim left him babbling to himself and took stock of the sitch. The dissolvant nail polish would eat straight through the "spypaper" - sheesh, she felt like a dork just calling it that – Rufus could probably retrieve it from her backpack – and Drakken's bombs had always been fairly simple to defuse – cut the red wires, and you were good to go. Still, Drakken _was_ having a good day, cunning-wise, and she wasn't eager to underestimate him again.

Drakken turned to Kim, and she watched him deliberately form a swaggering smile. "And even if you could escape," he hissed, "WHICH YOU CAN'T – it would all be for naught!" He jutted out the chin, and Kim had the sudden urge to sock it back into place. "The In-Crud-ible Stinktacular Flesh-Eating StenchNuke of Apocalyptic Nightmares is programmed to self-destruct if handled by anyone other than Shego or I!"

Well, stink – _that_ complicated things. Kim flinched mentally – and only mentally. By now she'd become an expert on disconnecting what went on inside from the reactions she let her foes witness.

Drakken suddenly snapped himself up to his full height and his arms met in a lanky tangle over his chest. "You'd be left covered in the most hideous smell known to mankind. And then," he added smugly, "no boy will _ever_ want to go out with you."

It was as pathetic and childish as any of Drakken's insults, but it found a tender spot and nestled in. Some degree of that must have shown on her face, because Drakken's grin widened, lips once again reaching for lobes. His eyes were unabashedly triumphant.

Kim fixed him with a glare that usually melted at least some of his villainous brattiness. This time, though, Drakken spun on his heel, barely managing to keep his balance, and headed for the door. Once he reached it, he turned to glower at Kim one last time. A thin layer of creepiness formed over his face, keeping her apart from the Drakken she could deflate with one smart remark. She hated when it did that.

"Farewell, Kim Possible!" Drakken boomed in that nasty, stainless-steel voice he could only maintain for about two minutes at a time. The ghost of a chill ran up and down her arms, more disgust than fear. He quirked half his eyebrow in some pretty obvious glee. "I shall return to deal with _you_ later."

With that, he galloped off down the hall, with all the stealth of a Great Dane sneaking around in an apartment, his tiny feet making more of a racket than Kim would have guessed they could. And then he was gone, and not a moment too soon.

At least her intuition had been right about THAT. _Good ol' Drakken,_ Kim found herself thinking wryly.

Yeesh. He could give the Tweebs a run for their money in the obnoxious department.

Kim breathed in annoyance and breathed out a plan. Glancing down at her best friend, still attached to the floor by his stomach like a penguin frozen to the ice in mid-slide, and said simply, "Ron?" After eleven years as best friends, there was nothing else needed.

Ron took his cue, slipping one hand out of the glove pinned to the floor, fumbling in the depths of his pocket and producing Rufus. The little guy didn't have the sleepy-eyed look he usually wore when Ron plucked him out of his cozy home to help them on a mission. Every muscle in his plump little pink body was taut, poised for action. There were days he was more with-it than Ron, who now nodded at his pet.

Rufus returned a salute – after three years, _they_ didn't need to use words anymore, either – and walked with precision down to Ron's fingertip, the way a determined kid would approach the end of the high dive. Then he sprang through the air with a move that probably would've won him a spot on the cheer squad. Still, Kim held her breath until his tiny paws caught on her backpack and hoisted the rest of him inside.

Kim could hear Rufus rattling around in there for a minute, before his triumphant "Boo-yah!" squeaked in her ear. The naked mole rat emerged, holding the dissolvant nail polish over his head like it was a barbell – which, to a naked mole rat, it probably was.

"All right, Ruf!" Ron cheered from the ground. He was way into positive reinforcement. Now he slid his other hand from its glove and began plucking at his shirt, robin-pecking-for-worms style, seeing if he could get a good enough hold on it to yank it off. "Just toss it to me and I'll go un-stick KP's hair."

Kim gasped "No!" into the suddenly-clear image of that big, clumsy hand losing its grip on the bottle and leaving her half-bald.

When Ron's face sagged in dismay, Kim wished she hadn't said it _quite_ so enthusiastically. "I think we should let Rufus do it," she added in her best cheerleader-perky voice. "His fingers are way smaller."

Ron nodded sagely, as if that had been his idea all along. Any evidence of hurt feelings disappeared, and Kim didn't want to risk bringing them back with even the friendliest eye-roll.

Rufus made quick work of the "spypaper" that held her hands and feet to the ground. When he was done, one of Kim's knuckles was bare and there was a hole in the heel of her left shoe, but – _so_ not the drama. What she was worried about was her hair.

But Rufus went over it carefully, delicately, like he knew how much this meant to her. Knowing Rufus, he probably _did_. Kim could feel the tiniest release of pressure on the strands, the way she always did when she was having split ends trimmed, and she silently prayed that was all that was happening here.

Once Rufus was done, Kim pulled her compact from her backpack and flipped it open – because if her hair _was_ five different lengths, Shego would never let her hear the end of it. She was pleasantly surprised – Francois didn't have to worry about competition, but it wasn't hideous.

It was Kim's turn to give Rufus a thumbs-up, and she could have sworn she saw him blush before he settled into brushing Ron free. Meanwhile, Kim shook the bottle upside-down and let a stream of extra-strength dissolvant ooze onto the spypapered floor, clearing a path just wide enough for a couple of skinny teenagers to crab-walk through.

Kim wedged herself into place and skittered back to their point of entrance as fast as she could, the adrenaline she was born for itching in her veins. She was pretty Drakken wouldn't really be able to achieve world domination via stink bomb, but the thought of his scheme being responsible for so much as a citizen's rash – not to mention the property damage involved – gave her the same bladed hollow in the pit of her stomach as when she had to turn in a half-completed assignment.

Her grappling hairdryer lay expectantly on one of the multitude of boxes stacked up under the skylight, as if it were only a matter of time before she returned for it. Its hook gave a tantalizing gleam, even though it was hidden well out of the range of the room's 20-watt-bulb lighting.

Behind her, Kim could hear Ron fumbling his way through the crevice the dissolvant had cut down the middle of the "spypaper" like the Red Sea being split in half. She gave his footsteps a few more seconds to catch up before she fired the grappling line, straight and sure as her spring to the top of the cheerleaders' pyramid, curled her fingers around Ron's anxiety-tightened wrist, and they were airborne.

Faintly aware of Ron's arms wrapped and shivering around her ankles, Kim grasped the edges of the hole she'd cut fifteen minutes ago and hoisted herself up into freedom. She reached a hand down to her best friend, which he accepted gratefully and then all but collapsed into a heap on the corner of the roof. He was panting, clearly ready to take five, and she would have let him if they'd had the time.

As it was, she allowed him a moment to reinsert Rufus in his pocket before she grabbed her hairdryer in one hand and the Kimmunicator in the other. Wade had a lock on Drakken's position before they even hit the ground.

It was only a mile away, and Kim assured herself even as she made tracks in the direction Wade pointed her in that they would get there in plenty of time. Drakken, of course, would have the bomb on some kind of timer for a big, dramatic countdown – because, even on a smarter-than-average day, Drakken was still Drakken.

Once they were back on the city sidewalks, Kim was able to flag down a hardcore cyclist couple on a bicycle-built-for-two, give them the high-points-only version of the story, and offer them her ten-dollar emergency stash of cash as a "rental fee" for that bike. The husband recognized her from the news, and the wife seemed to think Ron was adorable when he chipped in a few quarters he'd found in his pocket. At any rate, they were more than happy to lend it to them. Kim called "Thank you!" over her shoulder as they pedaled their way to the Capitol building.

She pumped her legs furiously, her mental timer ticking down the way the one on the StenchNuke had to be. Ron yammered in her ear the whole time, his chatter pretty evenly divided into thirds: proclaiming that they were going to kick Drakken's tail, worrying that they wouldn't get there in time to stop him, and wondering if Washington D.C. had a Bueno Nacho – and, if so, whether they'd "embraced the naco." He was pretty sure they had, being _way_ more sophisticated than Go City. There were times when Kim thought it would be easier to go on her missions alone.

The idea, however, slunk just as guiltily out of Kim's head as it had crept in to start with. Missions-without-Ron may have _seemed _like an appealing prospect when he was being a whiner, but in that instinctive part of her she'd long since stopped questioning, she knew it would be a major bummer. Who would distract Drakken and Senor Senior, Junior while she took on their more formidable cohorts? Or hand her Rufus when she needed a wire-cutter or make her smile when she was seriously considering strangling Shego? And who would be there to cheer her on and believe wholeheartedly that she'd get them out of any sitch in one piece, even when they were surrounded by crazed henchmen armed with laser cannons?

There was also something vaguely familiar and way-unfocused that pinged in her mind whenever the subject crossed it. Could have been the felt-so-real nightmare she'd had recently, where Ron had moved away and she'd been so ineffective on her own that Shego, of all people, had taken over the world. Randomness much?

But she couldn't deny its truth, and it jolted Kim out of her flashback to the here-and-now. Mr. Barkin wore his caught-a-student-daydreaming expression, which would have looked right at home chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

Kim flashed him another cheerleading-smile and watched his face ease into something a fraction less stony. She could almost hear him reminding himself that "Possible" rarely spaced out during his classes.

"Look, thanks a lot, Mr. Barkin." Kim toyed with saying that she'd just momentarily lost her focus because she was so blown away by his sheer generosity, but the man was a walking lie detector. "Oh – uh – that whole extending-the-deadline thing? Could you do the same thing for Ron?"

Mr. Barkin's eyebrows slammed together at the edges, the middles reaching for his cropped-short hairdo. "Stoppable?" he asked suspiciously.

Kim had to shove the words, "Uh, so not Ron Reiger," back down her throat. Nothing good ever came from pulling attitude with Barkin, no matter what kind of 'tude HE was evincing. "Yeah – yes," she corrected herself, employing the voice used to instruct people to file slowly away from the sparking doom ray Dementor had parked in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. "During third period, he was helping me save D.C."

Barkin's eyes slitted and his thick neck bulged against his collar until he reminded Kim of Pain King in a suit. "Helping?" he all but snorted.

There it was. The disbelieving tone. The scornful expression. The dismissive wave of the hand, writing off Ron like he was a split end that needed to be snipped away. She suddenly wished Shego were around to kick, though Kim had probably been guilty of all of it herself as recently as that morning.

The smile stayed in place, though she felt it turn to plaster, teeth clenched together, and a rush of heat singed up Kim's neck. The thought of scowling barely lasted a moment – to show offense was to admit defeat. "He was a majorly big help," Kim responded as graciously as she could, though she heard the whisper of a shrill edge she rarely let out to play. "I couldn't have done it without him."

Barkin's jaw muscles flicked, trying to decide whether or not to believe her. Kim kept her eyes widely genuine and locked right onto his, but her mind paged back to exactly how Drakken's latest plot had bitten the dust.

Once they'd reached city limits, she and Ron hopped off the bike like one person. Ron was already peeking into his pocket to make sure Rufus was ready to do his part while Kim plucked the Kimmunicator from her own. "Spotted Drakken and Shego yet?" she inquired before the screen was even through turning on.

Wade answered with a clothespin clipped to his nose. "Sure do," he said in a pinched-up voice that made Ron chortle behind her. "But I'm not sure you're gonna need me. Just follow the smell."

Kim sniffed at the air and, yep, there it was – the faint but unmistakable odor of what had to be a skunk carcass wrapped in aged cheddar. Ron swallowed a bunch of choking sounds, noticeably trying not to add vomit to the menagerie of stenches now attacking her nostrils. She was _so_ going to have to take a shower after this.

"You guys get in closer, and I'll try to find out more about this bomb," Wade continued.

Ron frowned. "From half a mile away?"

Wade flicked him a mysterious smile, wiggling his brows in ten-year-old-attempted sophistication. "I have my methods, Watson," he replied.

Kim didn't doubt that for a moment.

They tracked the disgusting aroma down back alleys and crawled the wrong way down one-way streets. Ron, at one point, picked up a ginormous, dead leaf he'd found on the ground and held it over his face which, per usual with Ron's stabs at camouflage, only made him that much more obvious. Finally, they reached a domed imitation-Capitol building with two tiny figures and a horrific smell perched around the ring of the roof. Either Drakken didn't think anyone would notice him on this second-rate version of its famous twin or he'd mistaken it for the real deal. He didn't exactly have a nose for direction.

Sure enough, when she pulled her binoculars out of her backpack and peered through them, there was Drakken, shivering in the D.C.-in-winter air, the skin around his mouth a shade bluer than usual. Shego, as always, stood next to him, _her_ mouth wrenched into a vulpine smirk. Kim knew it was only a matter of time before the bored gaze the villainness was currently aiming at Drakken would turn sharp and scan her surroundings – and land on them and tighten with the anticipation of ripping their guts out.

When the Kimmunicator vibrated in her hand, she was telling Wade to go ahead while the thing was still chirping out its familiar beep-beep-DE-beep.

"Okay," Wade began, tapping away at his keyboard, "there's an access code you can use to deactivate the bomb. A tiny keyboard's hidden on the bottom. If you type in D-R-A-K-K-E-N-R-U-L-E-S, it'll shut the whole thing down. But there's a problem."

"The fact that I don't know if I can stand typing that?" Kim asked only half-jokingly.

Wade ran both hands through the curls tangling over his forehead. "No. Once the bomb reaches ten minutes, no one can override it. And THEN there's the question of how to get a hold of it in the first place."

Kim's spirit didn't even get the chance to sink. Wade would come up with something. He always did.

She took off across chunks of concrete and prestigously-kept lawns, Ron huffing behind her and managing to run straight into a presidential statue at one point. The wind bit at Kim's cheeks and her belly button and reminded her of how very alive she was. Alive and getting ready to bust a bad guy's chops. It was one of her favorite states to be in.

As she ran, Kim kept one ear cocked toward Drakken to listen for the sound of any immediate threat and the other toward her pocket for the Kimmunicator's tone. It won, and Kim snatched it from her pocket. "Go, Wade."

"Kim!" Wade burst out in barely-held-back excitement. "I've got good news for you!"

"I could use some."

"You know how Drakken said the bomb was programmed to self-destruct if anyone other than him or Shego laid a finger on it?" Wade shook his head. "Well, it turns out that would require a highly attuned genetic replication device that needs at least forty-eight hours to charge."

And if he'd just stolen the parts for the bomb today. . . "So he didn't," Kim concluded, her brain adding, _No, duh_. Her tight grip on the Kimmunicator relaxed just a fraction, and she stilled the expectant quiver in her legs with calm determination that rose smoothly from her center. She remembered Drakken looking her in the eye as he'd said that, chest puffed out to a ridiculous size. If he'd been bluffing, his grin would have been nervous and extra-toothy, his hands fidgeting with the air, his glare cloudy and unable to settle on her face. "But he wasn't lying, Wade. I could tell -"

Wade cut her off. "He used a slightly different method, that's all. He coded the bomb to recognize the patterns of their _gloves_!"

_Thank you, Drakken, for always leaving a hole._ Even at the top of his game, the guy's villainy was rushed and cheap. Sloppy. _So_ not hard to foil.

"Thanks, Wade. I think we can take it from here." Kim slipped the Kimmunicator back into her pocket and was hit with a double dose of resolve. Dr. Drakken was going _down_.

Once they'd reached the fake-Capitol, it didn't take long to slip on their suction grips and begin their ascent. Kim picked her way soundlessly up the side of the building, ignoring Ron's claims of altitude sickness. She'd heard his I'm-about-to-hurl voice quite a few times, and that wasn't it.

At the top of the building, Kim flattened herself behind the dome and allowed only the tips of her eyes to peek out over the hump. Drakken had his back to her, railing Shego out for something sardonic she must have just said. It was the perfect time to confront him. No point in sneaking around when she needed to take one of their gloves.

Kim strolled up behind them and cleared her throat. "A little domestic squabble?" she asked through a hiss. It really was way too much fun to taunt them now and then.

"Kim Possible!" Drakken said. Shrieked. His arrogant posture broke, releasing frightened trembles. Just like it always did. Honestly, it would have been monotonous getting the _exact _same reaction from Drakken _every _time, except that it virtually guaranteed a win. Kim wasn't about to be ungrateful for that.

"Sorry to ruin your good hair day, Drakken," Kim continued, watching in amusement as Drakken's hand went to the jagged shag of his ponytail. "But this plan, like the others, stinks."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kim cringed inside. Could that pun have BEEN a little more obvious? But Ron let loose an appreciative guffaw, for what that was worth.

"G-g-get her!" Drakken stammered. He jabbed a finger at Kim - and kept jabbing, like an inexperienced sister trying to pierce your ear with a needle.

Shego, on the other hand, only registered surprise in a few blinks before moving in for the kill. She sprang from the ground like a panther and was on top of Kim almost before she had time to prepare herself. Her legs came out to meet Shego in the chest, and the villainness stumbled back a few steps.

It gave Kim enough time to go on the offense and leap toward her, contorting her body into martial arts positions to avoid Shego's fiery plasma. Evidently Shego wasn't impressed by any of it. Her eyes glittered flat death, not Drakken's drawn-out doom traps, and in that split second, Kim knew why she'd dreamed Shego would have been the one to conquer the world.

Kim blocked the wiry forearm with her own and then twisted herself around to keep an eye on Ron. He was standing in front of Drakken, hopping from one foot to the other and spurting out, "WHUH-YAH! HIJAH! BOO! YAH!" Kim's only consolation was that Drakken looked as clueless about what to do with Ron as Ron did with him. He simply stuttered "But, but, but, but, but, but" until he reminded Kim of the backbeat on her favorite M.C. Honey song.

After about two minutes of that, Ron came forward, locked his thick fingers around the knobs of Drakken's wrist, and squeezed. Drakken's face froze on a grimace, but Kim could see the uncertainty in the scrunch of the bags under his eyes. Lots of things could send Drakken through the roof, but few more so than being touched, especially unexpectedly.

So when Ron pried his hand free, and it came away still holding Drakken's left glove, Drakken didn't respond especially quickly. He was still cradling his wrist in his right palm as though he expected it to rot and die.

_Then _it registered what Ron was doing; Kim could see it in his eyes. Drakken lunged haphazardly for Ron and he, by some clumsy miracle, sidestepped it.

Shego gave Kim a rough shove and started toward the boys, but Drakken waved her off. "It's just the buffoon!" he hollered. "He's nothing! Get Kim Possible!"

Kim felt the defensive stab that always pierced her when she heard Drakken belittle Ron. Like _he_ was one to talk about being a klutz or a "buffoon."

One of these days, Drakken was going to be sorry he underestimated the kid, and Kim wanted to see to it that today was that day. She also had to make him pay for the little burn he'd thrown at her about no boys wanting to date her.

Still, Kim focused her attention on avoiding the punches Shego was raining down on her. Things got messy when she took a scheme to heart, her fighting choppier, her moves harder to control, which was probably why Shego tried to bait her every time they crossed paths.

Ron ran, baggy pant legs flapping, to the bomb and somehow pushed his hand into Drakken's glove. With knuckles straining against the seams, he grabbed the now-giant knob atop the towering pimple of a thing and wrenched it to the right. The bomb rattled and rocked from side to side, growing smaller with every wobble.

As it shuddered its way back to the size Kim had first seen it back at Drakken's lair, Shego turned on Drakken as if she were going to leave claw marks down his face. "Dr. _D-eeee_," she said, warningly, between her teeth. "You _did_ program that thing only to respond to our DNA, RIGHT?"

Drakken's mouth worked into a smile that refused to consider an alternative. Kim could almost feel sorry for him. "Yes!" he retorted, not booming _quite _as much as he probably would have wanted to. "Well. . . yes. . . I mean, basically. . . sort of. . . "

The mad scientist's head jerked around in a fashion that didn't look humanly possible, and he pointed vaguely at the sky. "Look, a flying squid!" he cried.

Kim wasn't sure if he was trying to distract her, Ron, or Shego. Whatever the case, she spurted out a laugh, and Drakken gave her a crestfallen look. You'd think he would have been used to his lame lies being seen through and his stupid plots foiled, but every defeat made him wince as if it were the first time.

Even Ron only jerked his gaze skyward for a fraction of a second before rolling the bomb up and down his shoulders like the wannabe-jock he was. Drakken stayed statue-frozen to the spot, no doubt gearing up for a tantrum that would quake the earth's foundation. His eyes blazed with the kind of anger that often came before overturned furniture. It was one of the few things about him that could steal a few drops of moisture from Kim's mouth.

Once again, however, Shego wasn't one to let the unexpected knock her for a loop. She sprang toward Ron and clawed his hand. He yelped, which pinched at Kim, and released his grip on the stupid StenchNuke. It teetered there for a moment, as though in surprise, before sliding down the dome's slanted side.

Ron dove for him. Kim would have joined him, except that Shego took a swipe at _her_ and nearly succeeded in nicking a hole into Kim's ultra-hip Club Banana crop top. Hello! Way beyond rude.

So Kim had to turn her attention back to her least favorite foe and her slicing arms. An inner triumph was scripting itself in her brain. If Shego made a grab for her again, she could whisk off her glove and easily disarm the bomb.

Sure enough, when Shego threw her next punch, Kim grabbed for her hand. But Shego was nobody's fool. She heaved a plasma bolt directly at Kim's head and then wrenched both arms behind her back and lashed out at Kim with her legs. They went on like that for what could have been eternity, over the soundtrack of squeals from Ron and noises from Drakken that were saved from being squeals only by his gravel-shot voice.

Finally, just as Kim's strength was beginning to wane, she caught Shego with a perfect leg-sweep that landed the villainness smack on her backside. Shego didn't make a sound, but her face was clearly fighting against a flinch. Kim stored that away to savor it later.

Right now, she reached into her pocket and produced her restraint dental floss. One push of the button, and a spiderweb of reddish-orange thread at least ten feet long tangled itself around Shego and left her kicking indignantly at the air. "Thick as nylon, stronger than steel, and can shoot up to twenty feet," was how Wade had described it. Even _Shego_ couldn't escape from that.

Kim marched up to Shego, doing her best not to swagger, and relieved her of a glove, revealing slender, deceptively harmless-looking fingers. Shego didn't even rake her nails at her that time. The only emotion she showed was the unreadable glitter in her eyes.

That was the thing about Shego. She loved to fight - and Kim had to admit she was good at it - but there were times when, deep down, she just didn't care enough to keep herself from flagging. Catch her at one of those moments, and it was all over for her _and_ her boss.

Only panting slightly, Kim slipped Shego's glove onto her hand, careful to avoid the pointy blades in the fingers, grabbed the bomb, and turned it over. She was searching for the miniature keyboard, but her eyes fell on the timer first. 9:45, it read.

Wade's words ricocheted in her head. _Once the bomb reaches ten minutes, no one can override it._

The horrible reality seeped through the cracks Kim had seen in her enemy's performance. Shego hadn't been slacking off. She'd known she'd stalled Kim just long enough - and then let her have a ninety-percent victory that spat in her eye.

Kim had the urge to smack the grin off the little green witch's face. She restrained herself, though. No way she was ever going to stoop to Shego's level.

"Ron, it's too late!" she called back to him, and the words practically blistered on the way out. "We can't disable it!"

Ron crossed his brown eyes and gasped. Drakken chortled as if that had all been thanks to him.

"We need to go to Plan B -" Kim began, but Ron cut her off.

"I know what to do, KP!" he hollered. The confidence glowed right between his freckles.

_Those_ weren't words you heard from Ron often, and since no counterplan was coming to mind right away, she tossed him the bomb. Drakken jumped for it, but Kim whipped out the restraint-floss and sprayed it in his general direction. One loop around his ankles was all it took. He landed on top of Shego in a twisting, squirming mass.

Rufus cheered from Ron's shoulder. "I know what to do," Ron repeated, like he himself couldn't believe it. "Don't follow me, okay?" And with that, he scuttled down the side of the building.

That was Ron for you - weak-kneed and foggy-brained but selfless to the end. Kim turned to watch his descent and subsequent run down the street, wondering how she would break it to his folks that Ron was going to smell like an unwashed water buffalo for the next seven years. Knowing Mrs. Stoppable, she might just sell him to a zoo -

It stabbed through Kim that she'd left Drakken's hands free right at the very second she felt the fingers clamp around her ankles. His grasp was so fierce she expected it to scald her flesh. She could hear his ripped breathing as he jerked her toward the lip of the ledge - or was that her own?

At any other point in the day, Kim would have wrenched her legs out of his grip and given him a nice firm kick for good measure. But the ledge they were on was precariously narrow, and she couldn't remember whether the backpack she'd slapped on as she'd left school was the one that doubled as a jetpack or not. One wrong move, and she could go toppling to the pavement, where she'd smear more than her lip gloss.

But there _had _to be something else she could do. Kim was almost one-hundred-percent convinced that this couldn't be the end. Not for the girl who could do anything. She forced her heartbeat down to a steady-if-rapid rate.

In fact, she was holding it together better than Drakken was. When she glanced back over her shoulder to see just how scared she should be, his eyes were veiled with the rage and hate that would push him into seizing the opportunity to rid his world of her. But his lips were jagged, betraying another force that pulled him in a different direction. Conscience? A weak stomach? Plain old common sense? Whatever it was, it did battle with the sheer evil until Drakken closed his eyes as if in exhaustion, loosened his grip and took a weak, blind swat at the back of her legs.

It was a halfhearted attempt if Kim had ever seen one, and she maneuvered her way around it easily. As Drakken growled in frustration, she knelt down and bound his wrists with the floss. She opened her eyes as wide as she could and stared straight into Drakken's, to send the message that she wasn't intimidated, she _refused_ to be intimidated, especially not by _him. _He, of course, started to blink immediately. Drakken always lost their stare-offs. He blamed his contacts. Kim attributed it to the fact that, under all that bravado and bluster, Dr. Drakken was just a big coward.

The realization of her close call was burning in Kim's cheeks, but Drakken's had drained of any color whatsoever. His face crumpled, probably to squeeze back the shame of tears.

What, Kim couldn't help but wonder, had gone through his head when he was debating whether or not to chuck her over the side of the building? There were days when she would have loved to get inside Drakken's mind - and there were days when she suspected it was too scary a place even for _her_ to visit.

The police arrived soon, their wailing sirens a welcome song to Kim's ears. They loaded the tied-up Drakken and Shego into the back of squad cars. Shego didn't go quietly, thrashing every body part she could thrash and even attempting to take an officer out with her hair.

She was definitely the one in charge of the warped little duo. Drakken had his chin held in the air defiantly, but it wobbled. He couldn't have looked less commanding if he'd been wearing a sundress.

He could invent a stink bomb capable of flattening the nation's capital. He could code it to recognize specific glove patterns. He could cover his lair's floor in sticky white tar and leave her immobile on it. Drakken could be smart, he could be competent, he could be evil.

But he couldn't win. Not ever.

Kim grunted to herself. That was Drakken in a nutshell - and what better place for such a little nut?

"Fine."

Kim jerked back to Barkin's big, blocky chin. His teeth were gritted together but didn't appear to be grinding. That made Kim chance a "Yes, sir?"

Barkin gave a hairball hiss in his throat, as if he couldn't believe what he were about to say. "I said, _fine_. Stoppable has until the end of first period tomorrow, too."

Kim nearly collapsed in front of the teacher's desk. It was the least she could do for Ron. He'd appeared, sporting a sweaty face and soaked bangs and dark circles in the armpits of his mission shirt, right as the police were taking Drakken and Shego into custody. The bomb was nowhere to be seen - or smelled.

"How did you stop it?" Kim asked.

Ron shook his head and pushed his damp cowlicks out of his eyes. "I didn't," he huffed. "It went off."

Kim took another sniff at the air but couldn't pick out anything worse than truck exhaust. "It _did_?"

"I just took it someplace nobody would notice," Ron explained.

She felt her eyebrows cinch together. "Where?" she said.

Ron's face broke into her favorite grin. "The boys' locker room at the local high school."

And Kim had understood perfectly.

Now even Barkin was acknowledging that, and she was willing to bet Drakken, somewhere in his dark holding cell, was cursing himself for writing Ron off as worthless. Barkin _and_ Drakken in one day? It was almost too good to be true.

"Thank you, Mr. Barkin!" Kim bubbled at him with genuine enthusiasm. "You are the _best_."

Barkin cricked his neck at her. For a glimmer of a second, a gleam passed through his narrow eyes - his sign that he wasn't tweaked. Well, no more tweaked than Barkin's usual something-is-crawling-up-my-back disposition.

Then he snapped, "Get out of here, Possible, and go work on that report," and the moment passed. Kim treated him to a polite wave and made for the door at a fast walk to tell Ron the good news. If he knuckled down and didn't spend the evening playing video games, he had a chance.

And Kim's essay would be on Barkin's desk first thing in the morning, if all went as planned. Now that her arch-foe had been arrested, the chances of her needing to drop everything and sprint for another country had been halved. Drakken wasn't exactly the biggest threat to world security, but he _was_ one of the most dogged. The guy just did _not_ know when to give up.

And, Kim thought as she slipped out into the hall, she would kinda miss him if he ever did.


	5. This February

**~And here begins my attempt to work with _So the Drama_. There were a lot of good things about that movie, but there was also a lot of stuff that. . . didn't quite make sense. (Like, we watch Ron's feelings for Kim develop, but not vice versa. And Drakken's suddenly cunning, ruthless, and focused, which is odd.) What frustrates me is that those points very well _could_ have made sense, if just a little bit of extra effort had been put into it. **

**So this is me, trying to fill in the gaps. Hope it seems believable. ~**

364 days out of the year, Kim Possible believed that a strong, independent young woman did not need a guy to be complete.

Too bad today was February 14th.

She'd ignored the tacky crepe-paper hearts rapidly multiplying around the school and rolled her eyes through the cheerleader's pre-V-Day squeal-fest that she would have led at one point. But it was impossible to miss the giant banner that stretched across the front hallway, proclaiming, "V-Day Dance Tonight!" Below the words, a painted couple danced in fading twilight.

The scrolling penmanship was so perfect, the artwork so colorful and pop-off-the-page realistic, it could only have been done by Josh Mankey.

Josh.

From the instant little freshman Kim had laid eyes on the gorgeous sophomore with the sun-bleached shock of sandy hair and the quiet-yet-intense blue eyes, she had been crushing her heart out over him. She'd spent that Valentine's Day and the one after with her breath held all the way through last period, willing him to smile at her, drop a card on her desk, ask her to the dance. Her dreams had gotten bigger every hour.

And now he was Tara's.

That was a lump in the throat, not a slap in the face. Tara was _only _about the sweetest girl on the planet, and she wouldn't dream of parading Josh around where she knew Kim would be watching. As if she would really go into the bathroom and cry over it. That was so seventh grade.

It wasn't so much seeing Josh with Tara that hurt. It was seeing Hope with Bobby, Marcella with Jonathon. . . and especially Bonnie with Brick.

Prom posters had already started going up, and girls and boys had already begun to size each other up in the hallways. Valentine's Day was like the eye of the storm - a deceptively calm, sweet occasion where couples would pair up, and then all heck broke lose as they tried to stay together so they'd have a date when prom-in-April rolled around.

Even now, Bonnie was gliding down the hall toward Kim, flipping her perfect shag cut back over her perfect tanning-booth shoulders. Her wrist was overwhelmed by a huge jeweled bracelet, no doubt a romantic gift from the clueless quarterback. Kim's lip rolled up in disgust at the very sight of her.

Bonnie stopped a few feet away from Kim and curled up her own lip into her facsimile of a smile. "Where's _your _boyfriend, Kim?" she purred, running her long fingers across Kim's arms with fake-sympathetic kneading. More revulsion crawled through Kim than when she'd smelled Professor Dementor's sweat socks.

"Ohhhh, that's right," Bonnie continued. "You don't have one!" She pulled away and laughed, a light, just-too-girlfriends-having-fun laugh. Her eyes, however, were wicked.

The sting went right up Kim's backbone, though she knew it shouldn't have. Puh-leeze. How lame was that? Shego could make better quips in her sleep.

Kim readjusted his backpack and her facial expression. "And what are your suggestions for how to snag a guy, Bonnie?" she asked, not even attempting to keep snideness from creeping into her voice. "Taser him? Put drugs in his soda? Promise him you'll buy him a yacht?" She didn't bother cranking up a fake grin as she patted Bonnie's forearm. "Not everyone is as desperate as you are, Bonnie."

Bonnie's eyes squeezed into teal-colored slits, and, with a huff, she folded her arms across the front of a strapless top that Kim couldn't have even kept up. It was pointless wishing Bonnie would slide right out of hers in front of the entire school. The best she could hope for was that Barkin would notice and make a stink and send her home to change.

The girl didn't have a retort prepared to sling back at her, so Kim made her exit, stalking down the hall in her about-to-bring-somebody-to-justice march. Once she was out of Bonnie's earshot, she sank against a bank of lockers and sighed the deepest - the FIRST - sigh she'd allowed herself in post-Josh days.

She actually felt kind of sorry for Brick Flagg, being carted around by Bonnie as proof of her popularity, too dumb and nice to suspect that Bonnie had ulterior motives. Josh wouldn't have stood for that. He could see through Bonnie - another reason Kim had liked him so much.

And it wouldn't matter so much that she didn't have Josh - as long as she had _some_body. But all the boys she ran across seemed to be afraid of her, and not in that cute way guys had of getting flustered around cheerleaders. No, this was outright fear. No wonder - they'd seen her on the news, picking up and throwing henchmen twice their size.

Was that it, Kim wondered as she forced herself to her feet? Did she intimidate guys? Or did they just not want to get tied down to a girl who might have to bolt for Argentina at a moment's notice?

The whole notion of changing for a boy to like you - it was something Kim had never bought. But if _every _guy was put off by you, didn't that mean you were probably doing _some_thing wrong?

That was what had driven her and Josh apart - their busy schedules. Kim's crime-fighting career had gotten more demanding ever since she first crossed paths with Drakken and Shego, and it was Josh's senior year, so he was always gone touring colleges and writing scholarship essays. He was majorly intent on getting into art school. It had been his biggest dream ever since he was a little kid, he'd confided to Kim one night at a basketball game.

They hadn't had any classes together this year; their nights were spent bent over insane amounts of homework rather than on the phone. Eventually, it got to the point where the only contact they had was two minutes after second period to say "Hi" before Kim rushed off to English Lit and Josh hurried to Trig, and then, one day, Kim suddenly wondered if it was even worth it.

Not Josh himself - he was a great guy - but their relationship, built on stomach-flutters and sweaty palms and a tongue that dried out in his presence. Suddenly, it seemed silly, immature, with none of the glue that had held her parents together all these years.

She'd felt like an adult. A sad, wistful adult who had to face the truth, anyway.

So she and Josh had sat down and had the I-think-we-should-see-other-people chat. There were no tears on that occasion, just mutual acknowledgment that things weren't working out, a promise to try to still be friends. Afterward, Ron had threatened to "go all Mystical Monkey Power" on Josh if he needed to, but Kim couldn't hold any bitterness toward her old crush.

Josh was sensitive and friendly and cute. He'd make some girl a great boyfriend. But, for the first time since freshman year, Kim was pretty sure "some girl" wouldn't be her.

She was okay with that. After all, it wasn't like Josh had some kind of Mystical _Mankey_ Power that could only let her be happy in his presence.

Today, though. . . it was hard.

Kim paced to her own locker and determinedly spun the combination. She flung it open with adrenaline in her muscles, needing a mission. If only Wade would call and tell her Dr. Drakken had been spotted in Hershey Park with a doom ray and an appetite.

As always, her arch-enemies glared out at her from their wanted posters, Drakken's eyes bloodshot and cloudy, Shego's slitted and perfectly clear. It was kinda hard to focus on their sinister glowers, though, considering the enormous bouquet of violets sitting neatly on top of her books, pushing the computer back into the depths of her locker.

Violets. Kim's mouth dropped open. Her favorite.

She went up and sniffed them to make sure they weren't the cheapy plastic kind, and a fragrance that couldn't be anything but genuine tickled her nose. Kim pulled her gone-lax jaw up into a smile and lifted the vase from her locker. As she did, her books fell into a topple and knocked another square, flat object that obviously wasn't one of them onto the floor.

Kim picked it up and stared at it. It was a box of chocolates, with peanut and cashew clusters, just the kind she liked.

Mystified, she turned her attention to the vase. It _was_ a cheapy plastic thing, its entire bottom smothered by a price tag somebody hadn't bothered to peel off. Kim couldn't read it from this angle, but she could make out the Smarty Mart logo.

Okay. Major weirdness. Kim stuck her hand back into her locker and groped until her fingers hit a sheet of paper that hadn't been there yesterday. Sloppily folded to form a lopsided triangle, it fell open in her palm and revealed a sheet of typed sentences.

_Dear Kim,_

_This school wouldn't be any fun without you. Your smart and pretty and peppy and everybody loves you. Especially me! Nobody could lead the cheer squad better than you. And don't think I don't notice how much work you put into organizing the dances and talent shows and stuff. You're even nice to the nerd kids. Plus, you kick tail. I saw the way you took down that Drakken guy back in November - it was awesome! Please know that your the brightest, beautifullest, bravest girl at Middleton High. Never, never, never, NEVER forget. You hear me? NEVER! I know a guy like me doesn't have a chance with a girl like you, but I know you'll have another boyfriend soon. You're just that awesome. So, happy V-Day, Kim Possible!_

_Sinserely,_

_Your Secret Admirer_

Kim put a hand to her throat. Some part of her brain noted the bad grammar, but who could take a red pen to a note like that? It was close to the sweetest thing she'd ever read.

And a secret admirer was a thousand times more romantic than a quarterback boyfriend. Wouldn't Bonnie be jealous?

That thought was shaken off with a confident hair-toss. Nah. This was something too phenomenal for words, and rubbing it in Bonnie's face would sort of. . . taint it.

Kim creased the paper as neatly as she could and slipped it into her pocket, reluctant to let go of it. Some guy out there was crushing on her bad, and he'd known just what she needed to hear today.

She felt, once again, like the girl who could do anything.

Although, come to think of it, Wade hadn't beeped her for a day and a half. Drakken had actually been really quiet lately. Short-term, that was great - today, she definitely wasn't up to watching him perform the cheesy drama he'd written and cast himself in - but long-term? Not so much. That meant he was planning something, something big, and the less noisy he was about it, the more uneasy she got. It was so unnatural for Dr. Drakken not to leave a sloppy trail straight to his intentions.

But once Kim got to first-period study hall and her best gal pal, Monique, looked up from one of the low-slung study tables with _spill-it-girlfriend_ gleaming all over her face, thoughts of the dorky mad scientist vanished. Even at his most baffling, Drakken couldn't begin to compare to her mystery guy.

Kim eased herself into a chair across from Monique and let her backpack plop beside her. Propping _The Odyssey_ in front of her face, she ignored the guilty pang of it not being the most intriguing read she'd run across this morning. She fished the much-more-interesting note from her pocket and skimmed it over the table toward her friend.

Monique unfolded the note and scanned it, her beautiful almond eyes getting bigger with every line she moved down. When she was finished, she folded her fingers tightly around Kim's own eagerly-clenched fists. They both broke into silent squeals, the only kind that wasn't on Mr. Barkin's list of punishable offenses.

"So you have no idea who sent it?" Monique asked. Her already low voice was nothing more than a hiss, but the channeling of Sherlock Holmes came through loud and clear. Monique was completely NOT into crime-fighting, but no one could say she didn't have an adventurous side. She thumped her chemistry book on the table and leaned over its pages, splayed open to a random lesson.

Kim shook her head and shrugged in uncertainty she wasn't used to. If this were a ransom note from some anonymous villain, the clues would have already jumped off the page and given themselves to her. Her love life, though? _That_ was definitely a more complicated puzzle.

Monique flicked a red-painted nail at the paper. "We can narrow it down, though." She produced her chemistry notebook, flipped it open to an unused page, and began to run her pen across it. "Typed - which meant he thought you might recognize his handwriting."

"Or at least knew I could have Wade scan the work of Middleton High's entire male population until he found a match," Kim put in. Most of her classmates knew about Wade to some extent, but she didn't exactly go around telling people the kid could hack into the government's computers if he wanted to. "And - the spelling and grammar. He's probably not such a hot student in English."

_Is that the best you can do?_ she demanded from herself in disgust. It was a twisted version of her father's encouragement: Do your best. Never settle for less. Anything was possible for a Possible. Though Dad would probably have a quadruple heart attack if he knew some guy had left flowers and chocolates in her locker -

"It was in my locker!" Kim exclaimed softly. "So he knew my combination."

"Mmm-hmm. _Now_ we're getting somewhere. This boy's been watching you."

"Watching me cheer at games - so he's an athlete - "

"_But _-" Monique held up a hand - "he says a guy like him would never have a chance with a girl like you, so he's probably not that popular."

Kim's stomach dived into a dip she was immediately scolding herself for. "Or not that confident in himself," she suggested - in desperation. Still, even that probably meant he wasn't the hottie she'd been picturing.

Monique gave her a doubtful look, but she scratched out another note.

"And the way he says 'a guy like me'. . . like I don't know him," Kim said. "Or at least very well."

Monique's brows pulled down to her nose. "Ohh, I wouldn't say that," she replied. "I think he's somebody you know _really _well."

Her eyes were shining with All Knowledge, and Kim was hit by the rush of exasperation she always got when she wasn't on top of a situation. "What?" Her voice came out in a squeaky whisper. Most of the boys she'd gotten to know were jocks like Brick or cool artsy-types like Josh. It was hard to imagine any of them not having a girlfriend already, not to mention being too shy to ask her out.

"A boy you know better than _any_one," Monique clarified, lips in an exaggerated stretch. She tipped her head back wisely.

And Kim tracked her thoughts - right outside of the bounds of sanity.

_Whoa. Hello._

Kim knuckled the edge of the table to keep from falling right out of her seat. "Ron?" she gasped. "You think it's RON?" She knew her face was twisted into a portrait of disbelief she usually saved for Drakken's more outlandish schemes.

Monique gave her head an impish wag.

The idea was so ridiculous Kim couldn't even blush. She plastered her whole palm over her face and tried to think where to even _begin_. "Ron - he doesn't think those things about me -"

"He has eyes!" Monique stretched her neck up. "He can see you're gorgeous!"

"Oh, please." A compliment about her looks was the one type Kim had never figured out how to accept. In her opinion, they were pretty enough, but it wasn't like they'd been an accomplishment. She deflected it with an ironic glance at Monique's perfect brown skin. "Do you not _see _this lovely new zit on my nose?" she asked, pointing at the pimple the way a girl could only do with her best friends.

"Zits don't stand in the way of true love, girl." Monique shimmered with delight, all the way out to her deep-red droplet earrings. "I've been wondering about that boy for a while, actually."

Kim didn't need to force the laughter, carefully dialed down out of Barkin's earshot. "He's not an athlete, Monique -"

And then she could have said Monique's next words with her:

"He's on the cheer squad."

"He's the mascot!" Kim shot back. "I don't know if he can even _see _out of that mask - "

"How's he do in English?"

"Not. . . not so great," Kim admitted. It had been a long time since she'd experienced the sensation of being about to pop wide open, but right then, her whole body might as well have morphed into that zit. If it was even _possible _that Ron had a crush on her - well, there went the only guy she'd never been awkward around.

"_And _he knows your locker combo. _And _you know his handwriting." Monique appeared to be enjoying herself far too much.

"No," Kim insisted. "That's just WAY too weird." She shuddered a little. "It would be like, _Goodbye, best friend, hello 'complicated relationship.'_" A girl could get through life without a guy as long as she had her best friend to turn to - but if _he_ felt that way about her - just - what was she even supposed to do with that? "Things would never be the same."

Monique laid her hands flat on the table. "I never thought you were afraid of change," she snorted.

"We're talking twelve years of my life here!" Kim said. "Not a shake-up in the class schedule."

"Fair point." Monique nudged her under the table with the toe of her shoe. "At any rate, I could be _totally_ wrong." She flashed an extra-white smile at Kim. "But so could you."

Kim glanced down at her leg and noticed it was shaking, ever so slightly. She couldn't even remember the last time it had done that.

"Wade." Kim barked his name into the Kimmunicator a little more harshly than she had intended. "I need the English grades of every boy at Middleton High, _and _information on their extracurricular activities _and _- could you analyze this paper and see what brand of printer it came from?"

Kim dangled the note before Wade's eyes and bounced her glance off the cafeteria's sickly-yellow walls. Ron would be arriving at their usual table any second now, sprawling his too-long-for-coordination self across two or three chairs if he were in a casual frame of mood. She sure didn't want him walking in on this.

Wade glanced up from his keyboard, eyebrows reaching for his curls. "Orrrr," he said slyly, "I could just send you the security camera footage from your locker today."

Kim's grip went tight on the Kimmunicator. "Please and thank you," she somehow managed to say. Hottie or nottie, whoever this guy was had her heart thundering away.

With a friendly-smug grin, Wade expertly punched one key. His face was instantly replaced by a grainy recording of pure blackness. After two minutes of that, Kim was fighting back a yawn. Yikes - _The Odyssey _was downright fascinating compared to this.

It wasn't too long, however, before light filtered in through the cracks in the locker's door, which never quite shut straight. That same door was flung open by the big hand of a boy-kid, who then took several steps back and approached the locker again at a more casual angle.

The boy was wearing a black hoodie that swallowed him whole, pulled all the way down past his nose. It made him look like one of the school punks bound for detention, but something about his lanky, loping walk was beyond familiar. And the furtive glances he kept casting over his shoulder broadcast that he wasn't used to sneaking around like this.

It could only be one person - a person it absolutely COULDN'T be.

But a freckle peeked out from under the hoodie - lots of guys had freckles, though - and the hands that juggled the chocolate box and the face knew their way perfectly around the inside of her locker - as if he didn't even NEED to see. And once he had rearranged the gifts for the twelfth time and was finally satisfied, his mouth broke into a grin Kim could have identified from three counties away.

It was Ron.

"It was Ron," Kim repeated - out loud - in the hopes that Wade would correct her.

He didn't. He confirmed it with talk of DNA scans and fingerprint tests and a whole slew of other things that were as faraway and forgotten as poor old Odysseus himself. Kim snapped back to the moment only when she heard Wade say, "You could do a lot worse, you know."

The words landed funky, as if they'd done an awkward dismount from the top of the cheerleaders' pyramid. They pushed a sigh from Kim. "That's not my ish, Wade," she said - and then bit her lip. How much of this should she share with Wade? He was brilliant for eleven - and definitely more mature than her brothers - but he was still eleven.

"I'm just worried about how it'll affect our friendship," she boiled it down to.

Wade nodded. "Oh. I understand." His rapid blinking told her he didn't entirely, but he was trying to. He took a long swig of his soda before adding, "Well, good luck."

The sound of someone's tennis shoes flopping across the smooth stone floor broadcast Ron's approach, and Kim's finger hovered to the Kimmunicator's red hang-up button. "Got to go, Wade," she said and pressed the button in casual, can-do style.

As she'd predicted, Ron fell into a chair right beside her. There was an almost feverish glint in his eyes, and the neck-jerk toward Kim was even klutzier than usual. "Who you talking to, KP?" he asked - like there was a long line of people who regularly called her on the Kimmunicator.

Kim flashed a smile in her best friend's general direction. "Oh, just Wade."

She could count the occasions where she hadn't been able to meet Ron's gaze on one hand. Right now was one of them.

By the end of the day, though, Kim was sick of the dodging and the darting and the dancing. She had to confront Ron with this before things spun even farther out of control. The longer they waited, the less chance there was of saving their friendship.

And Kim was Kim-determined that they would remain best friends. Being around Ron was so comfortable and freeing. After all, she told him about all the crushes she'd ever had, he told her about his, and then they worked to set each other up with whoever they were eyeing. She could punch him when he talked with his mouth full. The Tweebs turned almost human around him.

Kim loved Ron too much to love him. She'd seen how dating could fail. She knew how easily crushes went awry. She wasn't willing to risk that.

Swallowing hard, Kim closed her locker door. Ron had already shoved books, folders, and loose papers into his backpack and was standing midway down the hall, waiting for her. A thousand Shegos and a hundred Bonnies couldn't have been a more intimidating sight.

The girl who could do anything wasn't sure she could do this.

But the same feet that had carried her across the dark danger of bad guys' lairs closed the gap between her and Ron, and she put on her sternest expression. Which was lost on Ron, because he was staring at a broken shoelace. Even when she cleared her throat, he wouldn't look up.

"Have a nice Valentine's Day, KP?" he asked. The last syllable shot upward, as was typical for Ron.

"Actually, I did," Kim responded evenly. "Thanks to you."

Ron's head snapped up whiplash-fast, and the color fled from his face. "What - what do you mean?" he squealed. Rufus stirred and gibbered from his pocket.

"Oh, come off it, Ron." Kim felt a smile twitching the corners of her mouth, but she refused to give in to it. "I know it was you."

"You _do_?" Ron gasped. And then he actually chomped down on his tongue and amended, "You know _what_ was me?"

"I know you're my Secret Admirer." Kim produced the note and waved it under his nose. Her resolve didn't falter, but underneath it, her heartbeat was going wild.

Ron squirmed until Kim thought he would crawl right out of his pants. "How?" he asked.

Rufus, who had climbed to Ron's shoulder for moral support, whispered something urgently in his ear. Ron smacked his palm over his eyes. "Wade," he groaned.

Classic Ron. Kim leaned herself against the wall and crossed her arms crisply over the cropped hem of her shirt. "So, I'd _really _like to know what that's about," she said.

"You weren't supposed to know it was me!" Ron burst out.

Kim bit back a _No, duh_.

"And I didn't do it because I was in love with you!" he added.

All the air hissed out of Kim's lungs. She worked on not going limp with relief.

Ron ran a too-big hand down the back of his neck. "I mean, not that I lied about all the stuff in the note - you really are pretty and smart and your smile's as beautiful as a sunrise -"

Kim's giggle spat out on impulse. "_What_?"

"Oh," Ron squeaked. "Did - did I not put that in there?"

Shaking her head, Kim smothered a grin. Whatever his motivation, she was fast approaching flattered.

"Well, I _meant _to." Ron's voice was now tissue-thin and squeakier than Rufus's. His cheeks blushed in pink splotches, framing his sweet spray of freckles. He was cute, Kim realized. Not in the same way that Josh Mankey was, but he had a kind of endearing look. "Rufus suggested 'more beautiful than cheese,' but I nixed that."

Rufus let out an indignant mutter that indicated he hadn't forgiven Ron for that. Ron patted the naked, pink head. "Sorry, buddy. I just thought that would make it way too obvious."

"So - why _did _you do it?" Kim asked. She arched an eyebrow at him, the way she would when interrogating Drakken. Neither of them could lie - even by omission - and Kim was more in her element already.

"Well, I knew you were bummed because Mankey dumped you - "

Kim took a patient breath. "It was a mutual break-up, Ron," she corrected him.

Ron nodded hurriedly, shrugging all the way up to his big ol' ears. "And I wanted to let you know that you're still in the game!"

"The 'game'?" Even as Kim questioned it, the crumpled corners were coming together in her brain. It gave her a warm, soft feeling, like cuddling the Pandaroo that nobody except her parents and Ron even knew about. For a girl who lived her life on the edge, someone who generate that in her was a rare treat.

"That guys still like you!" Ron gave Kim a pleading look. "I wanted you to see it and think some dude was crushin' on you and know that you're still worth crushin' on."

Kim could only stare - not an activity she was often relegated to. Was Ron saying what she _thought _he was saying? That he'd noticed her boy-related self-esteem flagging and had scooped it back up?

There may not have been any hottie showing up with a single rose, but it was the most loved a valentine in recent memory had made her feel.

"And that's it?" Kim could barely talk around her smile.

"That's it," Ron said, spreading his fingers wide as if to examine his cuticles intently. "I'm sorry if I messed up -"

He was cut off when Kim flung her arms around him and squeezed with all the love in her chest. "You are the best friend in the _world_!" she exclaimed.

Ron's chuckle jiggled sheepishly against her hair. "Well - uh - thanks." He pulled back and draped an arm around her shoulder, the way he did as naturally as breathing. "I was just doin' what any guy would do for his bestie."

It was a dorky term, but he was so sweet it didn't matter at this point. Kim turned a thumbs-up toward him anyway. "Well, it was awesome," she said, hearing the spunky bounce return to her voice.

Ron squinted at her. "Nobody's said 'bestie' since middle school, have they?"

Man, could he read her or what? "No," Kim admitted, shoving him playfully as they headed for the school's big double doors. "They haven't."

The doors slapped open at their touch, letting in chilled February wind and almost making off with Ron's words, "So, how's _Adventures in Odyssey_ going?"

Kim hitched up a backpack strap and found herself laughing. "You mean _The Odyssey_? It's not all _that_ bad. The story's really interesting, but Homer really has a tough time sticking the point. It's all over the place." She rolled her eyes. "And if I hear 'the glow-eyed goddess Athena' one more time, I'm going to scream."

Ron nodded the whole time and then launched into a rendition of his latest run-in with Mr. Barkin. He tripped over his own feet twice before they even reached the end of the front lawn and then nearly choked as the bus passed, heaving exhaust. It was just what Kim needed.

Whoever her next boyfriend was, she hoped he was like Ron.

"Shego, I have had an epiphany!"

Dr. Drakken jostled his cell phone up to his ear with a shoulder that seemed to be growing broader by the second. He liked that word, epiphany. Sounded like a highly contagious disease, but it really meant a sudden moment of clarity.

And he had just had the epiphany to end all epiphanies.

"Ye-ah?" Shego's voice was stretched tight, her usual reaction to Drakken's excitement.

It only set his heart to pounding harder. "I think maybe the reason no one was buying my brainwashing shampoo," he boomed in his lowest, threateningest, villainousest tone, "is because I was marketing it as brainwashing shampoo!"

From the other end of line - well, not a physical _line_, since they were on cell phones - came a faint little wheeze, one of Shego's many variations on a laugh. Three years as partners-in-crime, and Drakken had heard just about everything but the genuine article from her. "Oooh, there's an idea, Doc," she said. "Those psychology classes _are_ doing you a world of good."

"Thanks!" Drakken beamed at her compliment - that was what it was, right? A compliment? "Dr. Drakken out!" He pressed the "End Call" button _without saying goodbye_ - too sentimental - and flipped the phone closed with his chin.

The lair was cold and silent, perfect for sinister plotting. Drakken didn't have the time to be lonely anymore. People were just nuisances anyway. At least his henchmen were. Just yesterday, one of them had reported to him from his branch of the research-into-the-teen-psyche mission to inform that no, he hadn't found anything that would help yet, but this _Cool Teenz_ magazine was really neat and could they maybe subscribe to it?

It was the closest Drakken had ever come to hitting someone.

His temper had been concerning him for the last couple weeks, actually. It didn't burn as hot, but it drove him do things he never would have considered last month.

Like when that guy showed up at his door trying to sell him a life insurance policy - like how did a traveling salesman even find a haunted island lair in the first place? - and Drakken had nearly charbroiled him. He'd always used his laser security system to scare off salespeople, maybe give them a nice little tushie-burn to remember him by, but this time, Drakken had had half-hoped to validate the man's _own _life-insurance policy.

And he wasn't even sorry.

Weirded-out, but not sorry.

He wondered what Professor Ship's explanation would have been. Drakken was one of his best students - the professor had told him that - but there were some things even he wasn't able to puzzle out yet.

But he wasn't taking this class to understand him_self_. This was all about knowing his enemy. What was there to understand, anyway? He was finally acting like a villain, simple as that.

Funny how none of his classmates were even aware that he _was_ a villain. Drakken kept forgetting to announce it, and after about two weeks, he'd realized nobody had guessed. His intentions were still locked safely up inside him. Drakken wasn't accustomed to that, but it was sly and sneaky and secret and he wanted to hang on to it.

The ball was in his court, and _he _had control over whether he gave it back or not.

_If you don't tell them, they won't know._ Really, what mental masterpiece would he come up with next?

Drakken sighed happily and ran his gaze over his surroundings. His Alpine lair, nestled within the rugged rocky bar-graphs of the mountains, gave off menace from every angle with its high, dark walls spilling up to a formidable ceiling. Its miniature rooms settled into niches in the wall, protected by sheets of glass. Its sprawling, wide-open space, just right for supervillains that suffered from mild cases of claustrophobia, but disturbingly empty to a trespasser.

He'd gone through dozens, if not hundreds, of hideouts in his life as a supervillain. Drakken's lairs were like his children; he couldn't choose a favorite. (Except for that first one - the shack behind the railroad station that dripped tar from the ceilings and was nearly blown apart by trains every night. That one was definitely not on the list.) He loved this lair every bit as much as his haunted island one, though he did miss his giant red bed. It wasn't that he every time he was in that bed, he was able to sleep. But every time he was able to sleep, he was in that bed.

Besides, he'd forgotten his lucky bedtime socks back at the other lair. Never had a bad dream when he was wearing those socks.

Drakken strolled down one of the ominous dark corridors now, between two rows of sagging Synthodrones, a general flanked by his troops. "Atten-SHION!" he bellowed, just to watch them snap to it, their arms clamped at their sides, their blank non-faces with the gas-mask eyes fastening on him. Though he'd only been working with the synthetic men for a little over a month, they were already smarter than his henchmen. Of course, they were _his_ invention, so how could they _not _have superior intelligence?

Kim Possible's face flashed through his mind, curling her lip all up and sneering, "You are SO conceited." He'd grinned and thanked her, because she'd just proven she wasn't able to see inside his head, the way he'd feared she was. If she could, she would have seen the doubts and the whispers and the nags that held Drakken prisoner to his own ego, that made him such a mess.

_Used _to make him a mess. Not anymore. Not now that he had a plan that was both foolproof and unknowable. It was hard _not _to be conceited when you were this brilliant.

Clever as they may have been, his Synthodrones _did_ still have physical weaknesses, Drakken had to admit. Pure pummeling force wouldn't do a thing to them, but they were vulnerable to puncture and Shego's plasma. And so much as a single appendage was severed, every drop of their syntho-goop would rush to pour itself out the hole and leave them nothing more than limp husks.

That was why Drakken tested them on Shego every day. The Sythodrones had to be completely perfect before he unleashed them on Kim Possible. If they had even the most meager flaw, she would find it and exploit it. The thought was like vinegar, souring his brain.

He was working on it, though. He'd been chemically experimenting on their goo to get it to clot at even greater density than human blood and trying to program them not to freeze up and go offline in the event of a missing limb or some such thing. And - Drakken was especially proud of this - he was wiring them to be able to shoot massive amounts of electricity from the palms of their hands when faced with a pre-programmed enemy.

And only then. He still had stroke-like tingling all down his left side, and his big toe sparked when a thunderstorm was approaching.

Maybe, though, Drakken mused, "enemy" should just be the default setting for anyone a Synthodrone encountered, and he could program in the exceptions. Wouldn't take long - him and Shego. His henchmen wouldn't go near the things. Said they gave them the creeps.

Good. They'd fulfilled half their purpose already.

At last Drakken reached the main underground room, whose vivid shades of violet and deep blue never failed to give him the most luscious creepy-crawlies up his spine. Energetic, yet vicious. Just like their master!

Drakken flipped on the light, and it bounced off every surface and back into his eyes. The shininess nearly overwhelmed him, dazzling and clean, and for an instant he couldn't remember what it was he'd came in to do.

No, he had to focus. Focusing was the key, Professor Ship had told him. Luckily, Drakken had a little (heh-heh) _help_ now.

With that in mind, it was time to check on the torture chamber.

Drakken ambled up to the screened-off panel of a room. He wasn't sure he'd ever ambled before when he wasn't stalling for time, but to let an opponent sense desperation was to give them power over you. Learned _that _in psychology class, too.

Not that there was even anyone there in the room for him to frighten. No one human, at least. No less than seven thousand obnoxiously cutesy puppets, just like the ones on that infernal show he got trapped on back in September, wove their way around the cubicle, their mouths flapping open in Uncanny Valleys. The remainder of his base was soundproofed against it, but Drakken could tell that they were singing some Disneyland song in three-octaves-too-shrill voices.

Drakken's own lips parted for a snicker. Psychological torture, so much worse than physical. Maybe, if he managed to capture Kim Possible alive, he'd slap her in here for a few days. Let most of her marbles get knocked out of their circle. Insanity loved company, after all.

Chortling his most maniacal chortle, Drakken crossed to the other side of the base, where a huge glass aquarium spanned the entire wall. Inside lay the flawed product of a deranged mind - the result of his experiment with mutating sea life. THE OCTOPUS.

Like most octopi - that was an irregular plural known only to geniuses (geniusi?) like himself - it had eight suckery arms. _Un_like most, it also had one eye and fangs and a taste for blood.

It was already on its fourth caretaker. The first one had been strangled by a tentacle within the first week. Drakken had sobbed uncontrollably - he'd liked to sit with the guy and watch him feed the creature and chat with him. When the second had been eaten, Drakken had had nightmares for weeks on end. By the time the third came around, Drakken had wised up. He never got to know the man, never learned his name, never talked to him about anything other than Official Supervillain Business.

When he'd drowned, Drakken had barely felt a thing.

There was no denying he was a different Drakken now. It was as if he himself were mutating into a fanged, bloodthirsty monster, too. It was almost frightening how delicious it felt.

In his chest, there was a cold, unsatisfied spot that chilled further every day. In his head, there was hate that had once been fear and uncertainty. In his stomach, there was a growl for more, more, more.

Sometimes it felt like the lair really was haunted.

Drakken forgot himself for a second and waved at the current caretaker. The man waved back, and Drakken felt what was left of his heart split. This one couldn't die now - they'd connected.

Shaking that thought from his brain - he couldn't be sentimental now, he just _couldn't _- Drakken stroked the side of the tank with his finger. The Octopus came up and snapped at his hand, as if it thought it could take it off through the glass. Drakken felt no fear.

"Be patient, my pet," he murmured. "Soon. It will happen soon."

He wasn't sure if he was talking to The Octopus or himself.

His chest didn't itch anymore. A hard little nodule had formed in the center of it, and trying to breathe around it was like trying to walk with a blister on your heel. Only when it rubbed against something, it didn't hurt. No, what he was experiencing was so much worse than pain. It was a dizzy, can't-breathe, grasping feeling with no relief, nausea without throwing up, skinned-up knees without bleeding.

Drakken banged his fist against the side of the aquarium, not even startling The Octopus's cyclops-stare. Nobody in the history of the universe had ever needed anything more than Dr. Drakken needed world domination. And he was prepared to do anything to make it his own.

_Anything_.

Cruelty had visited him before, but it had never been more than a surface stain. Now it was planted, unbudging, in his psyche, roots nestling a hundred miles deep.

Yes, there were hurtles on the road to world conquest, but Drakken knew he could vault them. In fact, he would have done so long before, if someone hadn't had him on a leash and yanked him back from success whenever he got too close. And "someone" was a petite redheaded girl who ran around with her midriff showing at that. It was humiliating.

Fire seethed in Drakken's gut as he pictured Kim Possible's confident walk, her condescending smile. How he despised her! She thought she was all that -

- but she _wasn't._ And Drakken was going to show her that. After she'd rubbed her coincidental victories in his face for so many years, it was only _fair _that he be the one to bring her down.

Which was why he was going to psychology classes and reading teen magazines. He wanted to reach inside her puny little brain that somehow always managed to best his genius one and sift through it for the self-destruct button.

Not that he was having a lot of luck right now, which was completely illogical. She was a teenager, for Pete's sake! She should have been a teeming mass of hormones and insecurities, but Drakken couldn't find a single weakness.

And yet she had to have one. Professor Ship had informed the class that _every_one had a weak spot, something they cared for more than anything. And Kim Possible was too caring, too soft. Considering every time he'd opened up and loved he'd gotten hurt, it was just a matter of finding which vein to cut.

But he wanted the answer _now_!

Drakken seized two handfuls of shaggy hair in his fingers and somehow talked himself out of pulling. No, he wasn't going to give Kim Possible the satisfaction of driving him to rip himself half-bald.

Instead, Drakken took a stroll back down the corridor, nodding authoritatively at the lines of Synthodrones. Back in what could most accurately be described as an underground living room, he began to pace the floor. For all the lair's long, wide dimensions, he might as well have been trapped in a dog crate. His clomping feet pounded out a wordless reality he didn't have to untangle.

None of the people in his psychology class knew it was part of an elaborate, dark scheme - because he hadn't _told _them. If he didn't inform Kim Possible, either - she would have to gather the clues for herself. Could the little amateur do that? He'd bet she couldn't.

Drakken stopped pacing and bonked himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. Had he _really _been verbally handing her the key code all this time? Every time?

So that was why he'd constantly had to live with the unending accusations from his own head that he was stupid. Because he _had_ been.

No wonder Shego was always snapping at him not to reveal the plan to Kim Possible. Drakken had always thought she just got bored hearing him talk, but there was more to it than that. "Come on, Dr. D!" she'd exclaimed. "Fish or cut bait!" That had sent him running for a book of idioms.

And now that he knew what it meant, Drakken had elected to do both: put the plan into action _while _not breathing a word about it to Kim Possible.

_Every time you stop to tell her the plan, she wins!_

Not this time. Let Kim Possible be driven mad trying to figure out his plot. Let the old Drakken drain dry like a Syntho-husk and a new one rise from its ashes to claim the world as his own.

The now-frozen spot in him demanded it.

It burned his skin like acid, and Drakken, by instinct, fled from it, back to his room. There he sprawled belly-down across his bed, buried his face in his pillow, and screamed.

There. Well, he'd gotten that out - he couldn't let his frustration control him anymore. Drakken rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling without really seeing it. Now, where _was_ he?

Oh, yes. Letting Kim Possible attempt to figure out the plan. As soon as he figured it out himself. Nearest he could figure, he needed a cybertronic object he could smuggle into the majority of the houses on the planet, one that would lie dormant until the day he planned to strike.

Barbecue grills were too big, too expensive, too suspicious. Earrings would get stuffed in a storage box and forgotten about. Garbage cans weren't a hot, BUY-IT-NOW item.

Then what? _What_? WHAT?

Drakken gave his bedsheets a good hard kick. All right. Maybe it was better to think about Kim Possible's potential weaknesses after all.

Eating disorders? No. The girl was already as skinny as a rail.

Popularity? Negatory. Once you'd wound up in the newspaper for saving the world, your classmates would worship you for pretty much forever.

Fear of the future? Nuh-uh. Kim Possible was looking forward to the day when she could grow up and have a career. And, no matter how busy her schedule got, Drakken knew she would always find the time to barge in on him and crush his dreams. She didn't even let him have Canada, and there were only about five people who even _lived _in Canada!

At least the buffoon wouldn't be a problem. Just give him something shiny to play with, and the world could collapse around him for all he noticed. That was something Drakken had understood well, before that villain-psychiatrist had scribbled him a prescription for victory. The mole rat would be more of a threat, but you could always distract him with food.

And then there was the computer kid. Drakken would have to do something about him, too. Being defeated by teenagers was embarrassing enough, but _preadolescents_? How had he survived the shame?

A breathtakingly clear thought floated through his head. _So - kill all your birds with one stone, Drakken. Make sure HE collects the Object of Destruction, too!_

Drakken sprang into a standing position, his ponytail rocketing up over his head. A moment later, the air hissed out of him and he deflated against the side of the bed.

Anything he marketed, everyone would _know_ it was him marketing it. The brainwashing shampoo fiasco had proven that. His in-your-face style was as much a giveaway as his fingerprint pattern.

The obvious remedy was to steal somebody else's design, to let its inherent goodness cover his dastardly evil. Someone's else dreams being taken away from them for once? Drakken rubbed his hands together and let out a wicked giggle. _Ooh _- he _liked _that idea!

Drakken grabbed Sir Fuzzymuffin the Second from within the tangle of blankets and planted a sloppy kiss on his furry cheek. Then, realizing what he'd done, he made a face and tossed the bear back onto the bed. That wasn't villainous in any way, shape, or form. He really should just throw the thing out - except his mother had made it, and it had his same scar -

He realized it was the first time he'd ever thought of Sir Fuzzymuffin as an "it."

The thought was so disconcerting, Drakken rose to his feet and began pawing through piles of useless junk to get away from it. He chucked Mother's Christmas card over his shoulder, popped a piece of stocking-candy into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully as he rifled the catalogs between his fingers. Ham Snack Farms, L.L. Bean, Nakasumi's Toy Company. . .

Ick. Drakken shuddered at the sight of the - the - what did they _call_ those little Japanese faces with the giant, creepy smiles and the squinty eyes and the skin tones that were weird even by his standards? Whatever they were, he hated them. Too loud. Too flashy.

Kids today and the junk they put into their brains! Made his eyes itch. Why, if they'd ever seen a _quality_ cartoon like Snowman Hank -

Drakken shook himself, rolling in his lower lip from a pout. No, he probably wasn't supposed to like Snowman Hank anymore, either. Cartoons were the stuff of children and pansies, not of literally-unibrowed dictators.

That had been part of his soft side, a side he couldn't afford to keep. Softness was a liability. An enemy. Softness got you killed. Or, worse, sentenced you to forever be part of the common herd rather than lording above it.

Drakken glared down at the disturbing animated face. How you could love something like that was beyond him, but every kid in the world was crazy about Nakasumi's creations. Every time the man put out a new video game or action figure, a mob of tykes swarmed in the toy stores like it was a mosh pit. A guy could barely get to the Frisbee section without being swept away -

Because of all the kids. Going crazy. Demanding their parents buy them this thing. And take it home. To every home! In the world! Everywhere!

Drakken squeaked and fell over backward.

Perfection had fallen into his lap.

Of _course_! Drakken transferred himself from a horizontal plane to a vertical one, his heartbeat quickening to the speed of sound - which wasn't the fastest thing in the known universe, but pretty darn close. He would kidnap Nakasumi, and the man would have no choice but to fashion a new line of toys for him -

No, that was all wrong! Drakken smacked himself up the side of the head. He was being dumb again, out of habit. If Nakasumi was last seen being captured by Dr. Drakken and then came out with new products, it wouldn't take a rocket scientist's daughter to figure out that they were Drakken's doing.

Just like how he couldn't thrust the toys themselves at the world by force. He had to offer them as gifts, as objects of desire, as "THE THING" that they absolutely _had_ to have. Most of humanity were such brainless sheep that as soon as the toys became a trend, they would sell themselves.

Drakken sank down to the floor, criss-cross applesauce in his best Thinking Pose, forming a bowl of a lap where his fingers cartwheeled, too excited to stay still. All right. Here was the new plan: He'd kidnap Nakasumi, all right, and brain-tap him, extracting his latest too-cute, colorful, sure-to-be-popular character. Then he'd return the guy, who would be none the worse for wear but for a mild case of short-term memory loss and a tiny scar on each temple.

A thrill of eagerness-mixed-with-trepidation rattled through Drakken. He'd never actually disfigured anyone before. Hopefully it wouldn't be _too_ gross. . .

He snapped his ponytail, tossing away the possibilities. That spot wouldn't be such a bad place to have scars. You could just grow your hair to cover it - well, _Drakken_ could, at least. Nakasumi was about half-bald. Maybe all-the-way bald by now. It had been such a long time since Drakken had last seen him, when he'd taken over his video game factory and the buffoon had thought he was trying to steal Christmas. Why the heck would he have been doing that? Christmas was wonderful -

Urrgh! Drakken gritted his teeth until they produced a noise similar to sandpaper. He was getting distracted again! Must be time for his medicine.

Drakken reached into his deep-bottomed pocket and pulled out a prescription bottle of the best ADHD meds. Fumbled with the childproof cap, which by nature discriminated against people with abnormally tiny hands. Pried it open and shook three shiny white pills into his hand. Tossed them down his throat and then had to sprint for the bathroom and chug a glass of water to wash them down.

He could feel each individual one hitting his stomach, where the acid broke it open and released its brain-straightening assistance. He'd accidentally torn up the information sheet that came with them, so he wasn't sure of the exact dosage. But Drakken was sure it was fine, because it was classified as a "controlled substance." And something that was controlled couldn't hurt you.

Right?

Drakken leaned against the sink and gripped the faucet until his knuckles chapped against his gloves. Now if only he could distract Kim Possible. . .

Drakken's mind immediately went into a muddle. In the midst of it all, he was able to isolate one thought - _Who says you can't?_

And why couldn't he? Drakken let out a howl of triumph and didn't even care that he sounded like a werewolf. Kim Possible was nothing more than a teenage girl, a notoriously flighty species. Just because he hadn't stumbled upon her weak point yet didn't mean she didn't have one to stumble upon. And when he did -

His old downfall would become _her_ downfall. She would never see it coming until it was too late and he was in charge. It was so much better than a death trap.

Sure, Drakken had slapped Kim Possible in hundreds of death traps over the years - and every time he hoped they would work. But, deep down in the part of himself no one else knew about, he longed to capture her alive so she would have to witness his triumph. So she could watch the world she had fought so hard for fall to him, and she would be compelled to admit that Drakken was brilliant and competent and all those things she currently thought he wasn't. He could visualize her now, her spirit crushed as she bowed to him. . .

A delightfully frigid tingle ran the length of Drakken's spine. Shego always said there were things a lot worse than death. At one point, he'd been unable to comprehend that - what in life could possibly be worse than the end of it all? But the roots of cruelty had cleared a magnificently dirty path, one that now showed him rather than simply getting rid of Kim Possible, he could introduce her to how it felt to be Dr. Drakken.

Even still, though he would have preferred to keep her as his prisoner, Drakken no longer had any qualms about doing whatever the situation required. Not many, anyway. He didn't need Kim Possible's approval; he needed her destruction!

But that didn't have to mean her death, at least not right away. First he'd make her cry. Somehow, in some way, he would break her the way the entire world had broken him and now needed to be punished for.

This was a gem of a plot. Each facet of it was just as perfect and gleaming as the next. There was still a little polishing to be done, but once it was ready to be put on display. . .

Drakken's chest puffed out, emptying of its weak softness and filling with such _evil_! Such _genius_! Such _cunning_! He let out a laugh that rang ruthless even to his own ears.

On light, springy feet, Drakken bounded back to his room and collapsed at one of the wide, inviting experiment tables he kept in intervals of sixty feet around all his layers. He grabbed his first sheet of blueprint paper and, humming an Oh Boyz song, began to sketch out the framework of a new brain-tapping device. It would have to be bigger than his last one, and stronger, and less fragile. The ones he'd used before could break if the subject resisted, snap right in half with the force of their volition. Drakken had to suppress that. Titanium might be a good start -

After about ten minutes of that, his pencil seemed to take on a life of its own. It darted to the top of the paper and scribbled a stick figure in a hideous navel-baring shirt, with hair almost as long and swingy as Shego's. She was staring right at the brain-tapping machine-in-progress, gasping with horror at the sight of something even _she_, the great Kim Possible, was powerless to stop.

Drakken's lips curled into a snarl, a happy snarl that rested without familiarity on them. Turning the pencil over, he attacked the drawing, complete with war cries and enough restraint to prevent unsightly paper tears. Some aspects of himself he was learning to rein in - too wild, and they would trace it back to him for sure. Others, qualities he'd always been a little afraid of, he was giving free reign to, and things he never could have dreamed of achieving were now within his grasp.

Like right now. Kim Possible was reduced to eraser crumbs, and with one puff, he could scatter her beyond reach.

Someday soon, he'd be ready for the real thing. On that special night - whose date he hadn't chosen yet - Dr. Drakken would release all the darkness he'd been scared for so long to give in to, and civilization would be ripped apart. He would remake it in his own image, and he would never be lonely again. Or unloved. Or disrespected.

It would be marvelous beyond belief! Worthy of all the exclamation points ever written, all the victory songs that had ever been sung. Drakken rose from his chair, wrapped himself in a hug, and squealed gleefully.

And then he just stood there for a solid five minutes, shivering in delight from the coldness of his own soul.


	6. Last March

**~Not a whole lot to say here, except. . . I really had a blast writing this! :D **

**Big thanks to everyone who's been reading. ~**

**Her**

Kim Possible had never claimed to have some kind of Spider-Sense or anything. But she was pretty good at knowing when stuff was being lobbed at her head.

Without moving a muscle in her neck, she raised her arm, hand out, and caught the object that thudded against her palm.

Kim spun around, eyes narrowing instinctively into slits. She wasn't really worried - Drakken wasn't clever enough to think of attacking her at school. But - _sheesh _- had Bonnie really resorted to pelting things at her head? First-grade style?

But it was Ron she saw, propping his insignificant weight up by one foot against the bank of lockers. He was nodding as though he were a judge Kim had impressed on _American Starmaker_. "Nice catch."

The drawstring of Kim's muscles melted with best-friend softness. "Thanks." She squinted curiously down at whatever she was holding. It was round and small and wrapped in faux gold. One of those chocolate coin things old Mrs. Wilder used to hand out in first grade to the kids that got A-pluses.

And Ron explained it all with, "Happy St. Patty's Day, KP."

Kim was suddenly grateful she'd worn the _green _crop top this morning. Ron had fits over every holiday, Jewish, federal, or otherwise. He never missed an excuse to celebrate.

Ron sidled closer and put his gleaming, excited face close to hers. For the first time, Kim noticed a faint, fading patch of scarlet on one cheek.

She couldn't help but groan. "What happened to your face, Ron?" she asked.

"What?" Ron looked baffled for a moment, then placed a hand over the blotch. Kim could almost feel it sizzling against her own skin. "Oh, that. It was just Bonnie. Ya see, she wasn't wearing green - "

" - so you pinched her," Kim said. There was no reason to make it a question.

"Yeah."

"And she slapped you."

"Uh-huh."

Kim rolled her eyes. When was the poor kid going to stop Ronning himself straight into trouble? "You can get suspended for that anymore, you know."

"The slapping?" Ron asked. His eyebrows sprang up hopefully.

"No," Kim said, though she would have loved to see perfect little Bon-Bon's perfect little school record stained with a suspension. If the girl had been anyone but Bonnie and the boy anyone but Ron, it probably would have been justified. But, for gosh sake -

"The pinching," Kim clarified. She turned from spinning her combination to give Ron a sympathetic smile. "Remember, cute in K, harassment in High."

Ron's very shoulders drooped until Kim couldn't tell where they ended and his bony elbows began. "I don't get that," he muttered, flopping his arms to his sides.

Actually, Kim didn't "get" that rule very well herself. At least not when it came to guys like Ron, guys who got embarrassed and glanced away if the wind rode your skirt up. Ron was a dweeb, but he was a gentleman, too - in his own dweeby way. Still, he'd had enough after-school detention-with-Barkin that you'd think he'd appreciate the value of toeing a _bit _closer to the line.

Kim's locker squeaked open at the exact instant the computer's screen flickered on and filled with Wade. Ron jumped a mile, nearly losing a shoe in the process. Wade muffled a snicker into his hand. That was one thing she had to give him credit for - he _tried_ not to laugh at Ron.

And, as usual, Wade was back to business within twenty seconds. "We've got some major energy readings coming from Professor Dementor's lair," he reported. "He's planning something big, and it's not gonna be pretty."

"Dementor," Kim repeated. She hadn't many run-ins with the hot-tempered little guy, but she knew he was a major name in the villain community. Although he was a mad scientist, and he had the required ego problem, Dementor also had the common sense to lie low until his schemes were mere hours from completion.

Upside: No Shego. Downside: Waves of enormous henchmen who were actually competent. Booby-trapped floors. A foe that outweighed Drakken in terms of hard-packed muscle. . . and, of course, that common sense. Kim got the distinct impression there wasn't going to be a self-destruct button smack dab in the middle of the control panel for her to press this time.

"Dementor?" Ron squeaked, peering at Wade through his bangs. He hadn't had a haircut in ages. "Not Drakken? Dementor?"

Wade shrugged helplessly. "Sorry, guys," he said. "I'm just the messenger."

"His usual lair?" Kim's voice had gone cold and even, and she had the thoughts to match.

Wade nodded.

"Then we're there." She grabbed Ron's wrist before he could bolt and started toward the nearest set of non-emergency-exit doors. His face had gone so chalky, the freckles were dark like bruises, and Kim was sorry for him. "We can do this, Ron," she reassured him in her best bouncy tone. "We can do anything!"

Ron murmured something under his breath. Something that sounded an awful lot like, "_You _can do anything."

Aww, Ron. Kim fingered the wrapper on the candy he'd given her and lit on what she could do for him at the moment. She unwrapped it, took a bite, being sure to close her eyes in pleasure at the rich, creamy taste. Ron's wrist bones loosened ever so slightly under her grip.

She hadn't a chocolate coin since graduating from elementary school. It was a pleasant thing to remember - so long as she didn't _resemble _a seven-year-old with brown goo leaking from her lips. But, before a mission like this, as long as no one other than Ron was watching, Kim was happy to be a child again just for a minute.

The doom ray on display in Professor Dementor's lair was easily twenty feet high, a shape they hadn't gotten to yet in geometry, sharply pointed at every corner. Unlike the Teleporter, there was no way for Kim to tuck the thing under her arm and run away with it. Not to mention how heavily guarded it must be.

A direct confrontation was the only choice. It was the most dangerous method of bringing a bad guy down, and therefore the most satisfying.

Kim slid herself across the smooth marble floor. If there were any shark tanks, they were well concealed - another of Dementor's traits she was unfamiliar with. Planting herself between the wacko scientist and his wacko machine, Kim chopped her arms firmly across her chest.

"Give it up, Professor Dementor," she spat out. "Whatever you're doing, it won't work."

"Ahh, _Fraulein _Possible." There was a sort of silky purr to Dementor's shrill voice, and the greeting was so unlike Drakken's panic attacks, Kim grew uneasy. "Just the person I vas vanting to be SEEING!"

"And me, too," Ron piped up from over Kim's shoulder. His fingers shook even through his gloves. "You wanted to see me, too, right?"

Dementor glanced at Kim as if to say, _Did you hear something?_ No one but Monkey Fist took anything Ron said seriously. It made slapping them in a cell all the more vindicating.

"You are just in the time for my PLAN OF REVENGEANCE!" Dementor bellowed. All traces of silk were gone as he glared up at them. Dementor was a good inch shorter than Kim herself.

Ug-gh. Was he going to keep up the screaming the whole time? Kim could already sense a super migraine in the works behind her temples. "Revenge? For what?" she asked.

Dementor's eyes crawled over Kim's face so intently she half-expected them to leave marks. "Ohhh, not against YOU!" he shrieked. His pitch overflowed the scale at the end of every sentence, and Kim was seriously considering an elbow-to-the-mouth move just to shut him up.

"Vell - " Dementor paused and squinted deeply behind his creepy little metal helmet - "not simply just only against YOU!" he amended. He swatted at the air with a boxy hand, and Kim stepped back out of his reach. The disgust of being this near to someone so warped was curling her lip up already.

"Right," Kim said, shooting her gaze straight into Dementor's. It appeared to catch him by surprise, but he didn't go into Drakken's something's-in-my-contacts act. "Who else, then?"

Dementor's skin, as yellow as the nasty alcohol-sickened liver Kim had seen slides of in health class, took on a frenzied flush. "Against Dr. DRAKKEN!" he cried. "He had stolen mine Teleporter - "

Okay, so he was still mad about that. Kim couldn't really blame him there.

" - and, in returns, I vill take that vich is most precious to HIM!" Dementor finished. Most of the villains Kim knew had serious anger-management problems, but few could shake the air like that. Could she have finally met a man with blood pressure higher than Drakken's?

When villains got that fired up, they made mistakes. Kim clung to that as she fixed Dementor firmly in her sights. "And that would be - what?" she demanded.

"Um. Yeah. Hi. Okay, unless one of you doubles as a masseur, I'm guessing I've been lied to."

Kim whipped toward the doorway, heart reaching up her throat. She'd have known that snark anywhere.

Shego crossed the room with her usual elegant precision. Kim studied her face, searching for any soft remnants of the last time they'd met - the time when Shego had forgone body-slamming Kim to the floor and preventing her brothers from regaining their powers. She found nothing. Shego was as steely as Dementor.

_Okay - _so _not loving this combo._

Ron's mouth kicked into gear immediately, chattering at things that, Kim knew, he hadn't gotten his brain wrapped around yet. "Shego?" he blurted. "What are you doing here? You work for Dr. Drakken!"

Shego's brows stabbed upward. "Do I really?"

The sarcasm shut Ron up momentarily. If somebody didn't take control of the sitch soon, though, it was going to erupt like Mt. St. Helens. As usual, it looked like "somebody" would have to be Kim.

"Why _are _you here, Shego?" she demanded, voice at its crime-fighter sternest. Shego may not have done anything yet today, but there was enough junk between them to kick pleasantness out of Kim's options.

Shego wrenched her mouth to the side, not even smudging a speck of her black lipstick - an _out _look that seemed fiercely _in _on her. "That's what I'm trying to figure out, Princess." The words didn't spit themselves out as maliciously as they usually did, and Kim saw a glimmer of uncertainty flit through Shego's eyes. Kim let her hackles down, just a little.

Reaching into her leg pouch, Shego produced a crisp white sheet of paper that unfolded obediently in her palm. "I got this in the mail today," she said. "'You have been randomly selected to win a luscious massage, full pedicure,' blah-blah-blah."

Kim craned her neck to examine the paper from behind. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen Professor Dementor's handwriting, but it wasn't hard to believe this was it. All the edges were as squared-off as his stocky body.

"Yeah, you really shouldn't respond to those," Ron added, in all his streetwise glory. "And if someone calls you from Nigeria and says they can give you a million dollars, that's probably fake, too."

Kim slapped a hand over her best friend's mouth. Shego, on the other hand, completely ignored Ron. The glare she was aiming at Dementor would have had Drakken raising his hands in surrender.

Dementor _did_ back up a few steps, though it was accompanied by that maniacal hand-rubbing thing. His arm swooped out in a wide gesture meant to include Shego without actually touching her. At least he had enough sense to be wary of her. "I am here," he shrieked, "to make you an offering YOU CANNOT REFUSE!"

Kim stifled a snort. Shego refused whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to. It was way up there on her long list of most annoying qualities.

Shego herself continued to size up Dementor as if he were a fly on her sandwich. Like she was unsure whether to shoo him away or go for the flyswatter. Knowing Shego, she'd choose the swatter, and Kim would have to step in. Even now, Kim's muscles tightened with resolve.

"Join me!" Dementor cried. "Come vork for ME! Together, we shall RULE ZE WORLD!"

Oh - there was a mental image Kim didn't need. Time to pull the plug on this.

Before Kim could even take a firm step forward, however, Shego wedged herself into Dementor's path, still moving like a symphony. Her customary semi-amused expression slid over her pointy face. "What. The. Heck," Shego dropped on his head. "Where did you even _get_ that idea, Napoleon?"

Kim wished she'd thought of that first. Now it was better not to say anything than to be Shego's follow-up. Her silence wasn't one of bewilderment, though. Dementor had revealed his intentions, and now Kim could get to work yanking his plan apart.

A grin twisted across Dementor's lips, and he reached into his massive, red, twisted version of a lab coat, returning with an issue of some magazine with Jack Hench on the cover. "Villains Magazine!" he said, not even bothering to reign in the pride. "It was what was INSPIRATIONING ME!"

Kim had to swallow a cough. She had the feeling Dementor was a lot more intimidating in his native language, when he wasn't mistaking nouns for verbs.

Shego snatched the 'zine up in her clawed gloves and ran her gaze down what Kim could identify as a huge calendar with tiny printing on the squares. The pieces had just come together for Kim when Shego's voice went up into a sharp shout.

"St. Patrick's Day - consider pulling off green-themed crimes today!" Shego read in disbelief. She rolled the magazine up into a tube and hurled it at Dementor. "I'm a GIMMICK?" Her amusement had been replaced by something just shy of the total Shego-fury that could make even Kim nervous.

For the first time that day, maybe the first time since Kim had met him, Dementor's confidence wavered. But he recovered quickly, something else they must have taught at Mad Scientist 101. "It is not just a GIMMICK!" he spurted indignantly. "You are also part and parcel of my REVENGEANCE!"

Shego's face scrunched. "What?"

But Kim had already figured it out, and she couldn't hold back the snort this time. "_This _is your idea of taking away what's most precious to Drakken?" she said. Her giggles were scornful, and she didn't try to hide it. "Hello - since when does Drakken care about anyone besides himself?"

To her surprise, Shego didn't join in with her harsh snicker. She simply shrugged and continued to fix Dementor with a stare that could have peeled paint off walls. What was up with _that_? Kim wondered.

Her Kimness wouldn't leave it alone. She only had to go as far back their last encounter to remember how frantic Drakken had been when he'd shown up to "help" them defeat Aviarius, but Drakken was almost always frantic. Much less typical was Drakken peeking out from behind one of his lair's freakish split-apart walls, gazing at Shego, and murmuring something. Something along the lines of "evil family" and "I'll be here for you." It had been such a soft, quiet side of him that Kim wasn't even sure it was really Drakken.

And she was pounded by the fact that Dementor, for being stupid enough to think Shego would swoon over the chance to take orders from him, had judged Drakken correctly. This - this was _low_.

"Look here, Professor D." Shego leveled her fingers from her eyes about six inches down to Dementor's. Forget the symphony flow. Her movements were jerky, discordant notes that threatened to dismember everyone in the room. "We've already established that I'm _not _coming to work for you!"

Kim's jaw dropped. "Already?" She wasn't sure if the person squeaking it was her or Ron.

Shego whirled on them. "Oh, yeah. I went to all sorts of places before deciding on Drakken. Including this jerk's. He just wanted me to be a gimmick then, too. Probably his secretary, wearing some teeny-weeny little outfit he'd designed so he could ogle me."

"What's 'ogle' mean?" Ron whispered - loudly - in Kim's ear.

Kim gave him a sharp pinch on the arm. _Later_, she mouthed.

"During the interview -" Shego grunted through her nose - "he tried to _hit _on me!"

A raw knot formed in Kim's throat. She pressed her fingers over Ron's mouth before he could come out with, "Well, yeah! You're totally hot!" Although, come to think of it, Ron hadn't acted nearly so starry-eyed in Shego's presence lately. Kind of hard to have a crush on someone when she was constantly attempting to slit your throat.

Dementor's yellowness looked even more sickly. "Now, SHEGO," he said, with the great caution he should have been exercising from the instant Kim's feet hit his floor. "That is all in the PAST, IS IT NOT?"

Kim worked to slow even her breathing as she slipped first one leg, then the other, toward Dementor's as-yet-unidentified machine. If he and Shego kept going at each other, she might have the chance to shut it down before either of them remembered who their common enemy was.

Dementor wasn't as easily distracted as Drakken, though. "See, it would be just like working for Drakken," he said, letting the name fall as though it belonged in the garbage disposal. "You vould haff your own QUARTERSES! I vill pay you quite ATTRACTIVELY! You vould get to fight _Fraulein _Possible!"

He jerked his head back toward Kim, who rolled her eyes. Of course they would pick NOW to start paying attention to her. Still, maybe Rufus could escape notice long enough to disable something. Kim would have sent a message-in-a-glance to Ron if Shego's stone visage had even so much as blinked.

"Hmm, let's see." Shego rubbed the pale, pale green skin stretched tight across her jaw. "Hate you -" she nodded at Dementor. "Hate her more," she said, indicating Kim before snapping back to Dementor. "Would get the chance to off her if I worked for you."

_Uh, no, she wouldn't. _It would have been completely juvenile for Kim to shout that, so she kept her mouth shut.

"Buuuuuuut, that could also happen working for Drakken," Shego mused.

Dementor hacked up a laugh. "Drakken? Vhat chance does that FOOL haff of ever succeedingly eliminating _Fraulein _Possible?"

Exactly. Thank you. Shego without Drakken holding her back was a scary thought.

"Without me?" Shego tipped her head at Dementor like she was seriously considering that. "None." She ran her glittering eyes over Kim, then sneered. "And since Kimmy's not the one arguing for the objectification of women, I don't particularly feel like wiping the floor with her right now."

As if she ever could. Kim's muscles burned with the acid of all the insults Shego had ever lobbed at her. The girl had a sense for what was going to sting and keep on stinging. Combat wouldn't be a bad next turn of events right about now.

"Leave her alone, pipsqueak! She said NO - and she _means _it! Who do you think you are, anyway? _Me_?"

Kim couldn't recall ever being happy to hear that thunderous roar, but she was now. Drakken stood in the doorway, seemingly the longest, lankiest person in the world next to Dementor. His cheeks were chubby with sleep, his eyebrow bunched in a barely-conscious tangle over his tiny nose. His eyes, however, were wide awake and drilling into Dementor.

Everything on him appeared windblown. Kim had seen Drakken outside of his lab coat only a few times, usually when he was deliberately going for a certain look. But in a saggy-waisted pair of jeans he'd clearly just thrown on and a wrinkled T-shirt he'd obviously slept in, accessorizing with a major case of bed head, he wasn't achieving ANY "look," except maybe "homeless bum."

Drakken's fists twitched restlessly at his sides, and from the confrontational way his chin was jerking up and down, Kim wouldn't have been surprised if one of them had landed a punch on Dementor. _So_ not Drakken's usual MO, but he was clearly in a panic. Shades of the Aviarius incident were fresh on his face.

"Hi, Drakken!" Ron cried gleefully, flapping his hand in a wave. Then his freckles came to life and he whipped toward Kim. "Hey, KP, do you think Barkin is still wearing his boring brown suit today?"

Kim refused to take her eyes from Drakken's impending implosion. "And this matters _why_?"

"Well, ya know, if he's not wearing anything green, I could pinch him -"

"Okay, first of all," Kim cut him off, "we've got three supervillains standing in one room, all about to kill each other. And secondly, Barkin would have something _way _worse than detention waiting for you. I think he takes his discipline methods from 18th-century handbooks."

"Ohhhh, _I _get it!" Drakken's tone wound up mockingly, until it was nasal and completely nonthreatening. "Just because it's St. Patrick's Day, we all want the _green _girl!" He pulled himself up to to his full slightly-short-of-six-feet height, nearly losing the pants in the process.

Dementor opened his entire jaw into a rectangular slice of a grin. "Ah, Dr. Drakken!" he said. "Hello! How will you be do - "

"Don't give me that 'cordial' nonsense, Dementor!" Drakken bit back. "I know you're up to something." Drakken legitimately stomped his foot. He was _so _immature, but Kim could sympathize with the whole being-sick-of-dealing-with-phonies things. There were all those times she'd longed to slap Bonnie across the face and see if that would get her to stop simpering plastic all over the place.

"He's still mad about you stealing his teleporter," Kim informed Drakken - for everyone's benefit. The more confused Drakken got, the quicker things got ugly.

"Oh, yes." Drakken puffed out his chest and beamed his teeth at the room in general. "One of my more brilliant schemes, if I have to say so myself!"

Kim couldn't let Drakken's familiar arrogance pass without a groan. "You must," she said flatly, even though it _had_ been a pretty good trick. Who would want to feed that ego?

Shego usually voiced her agreement when Kim started dissing Drakken. But today, she tipped her massive-maned head to the side. "I don't know about that. I mean, it _did_ fool you," she reminded Kim.

As if she could have forgotten. Kim was still beating herself up for that. The girl who could do anything, fooled by the man who thought in calculus and probably couldn't tie his own shoes? Humiliation Nation.

"You were playin' dirty!" Ron shot at the Drakken-Shego unit. "That's nothin' to be proud of!"

Drakken cranked up his pathetic attempt at a snarl. "When you're a villain, that's _everything_ to be proud of."

The little brat's voice was so smug, Kim couldn't restrain herself any longer. "Gee, maybe I _was _thrown off by Drakken doing something smart for a cha -"

"EVERYONE BE SHUTTED UP!"

Professor Dementor's screech wasn't exactly music to Kim's ears, but at least it changed the subject. Shego whirled on him. Her eyes and hands were both flashing green fire.

"Look, Demented," she spat between her teeth. "We've been over this already. I'm not coming to work for you. All right? You got that? _Sprechen Sie Englisch_?"

"WHAT is going on here?" Drakken bellowed.

Poor guy. His cheeks were shimmering a dusky rose. Kim groped for a way to explain that _wouldn't _make him want to eradicate everyone in the lair except Shego.

Ron had no such moment of hesitation. "He wants to take Shego away from you like you took the teleporter away from him by making her come to work for him, only she already tried working for him once before she met you and she says he just wanted her to dress like Wonder Woman so he could oogle her all day!" he burst out.

Kim facepalmed.

Between her fingers, she saw Drakken go from powder-blue to waxy-white. "Is this true?" Kim hadn't known a gravel baritone like Drakken could squeak that high.

Shego gave an exaggerated nod. She was reminding Kim more and more of a hatchet.

Drakken pointed his body at Dementor like a switchblade, and there was a cold, deadly rage to him that he'd never used even with Kim. It was tough to blame him; Kim wanted to throw up at the thought of any girl being reduced to eye candy. Even if that girl was Shego.

For Drakken, it seemed to be _especially_ because that girl was Shego. Kim recognized his stiff-muscle posture as the one her dad took on whenever she was within ten yards of any boy other than Ron. Something protective overpowered the sloppiness. Kim found herself studying it.

"You are slime!" Drakken hissed at Dementor. "You are the 'Lose a Turn' space on the board game of life! Will you not be satisfied until you ruin everything for everyone?"

"_Nein_, Drakken, not _every_one. Just you." The words slithered from Dementor's mouth like snakes. Kim was afraid.

Not for herself. For Drakken. He looked like a great blue heron, curved over a compact car that easily could have smashed him to bits.

If he noticed, he didn't care. Drakken's fists doubled and he heaved giant bursts of air from his lungs. "May all your cereal boxes have metal pieces in them!" he pronounced, then turned to Shego and scanned her as though he expected her to fall apart right there on the laminated floor. "Why did you _come _here?" His voice broke.

"I was promised a spa treatment," Shego replied evenly. She forked the paper at Drakken, who seized it angrily, took one glance at it, and brought his eyebrow down murderously.

"This is Dementor's handwriting," he growled.

Kim didn't even ask how he knew that.

"Give it up, DRAKKEN. Mayhaps your sidekick simply wants to work with someone capable FOR A CHANGE?"

All heads swiveled toward Dementor. In spite of the yelling, he sounded perfectly in control.

In contrast, Drakken was about to have a temper tantrum at any moment. This was more like baby-sitting a rambunctious toddler than saving the world.

Drakken gave a brittle, bitter snort. "No, she doesn't!" he hollered. "She's coming home - with me -"

"Hello!" Shego whistled sharply between her fingers, the way only a big sister could do. "Don't _I_ get any say in what I'm gonna do?"

Kim felt her solemn face breaking into a grin. "Ten points for Shego."

"Owned," Ron added, glowering at the dueling mad scientists.

Drakken had the decency to look sorry, Kim would give him that. Dementor's mask flinched slightly at its corners. The atmosphere turned silent and sizzling. Time for Kim to dismantle that doom-whatever of Dementor's.

Kim almost giggled at the image of two equally funny-looking men squaring off against each other. Dementor was furiously stroking the goatee that striped his chin. The jeans were drooping halfway down Drakken's almost nonexistent backside. Kim glanced away, only partially to get a lock on the superweapon. She did NOT want to be treated to a view of Drakken's boxers.

"Vell, it does not MATTER!" Dementor exclaimed, though the savage way he chopped his hands to his hips proclaimed it did. "I haff a veapon that can DESTROY ALL OF THE EARTHKIND! And no one can CEASE me!" He drove an arm into Kim's side, and she karate-chopped it away. "You do not even know what it IS!"

Kim had to admit he was right. Still, like that had ever stopped her before. . .

"Because, unlike SOME PEOPLE - " Dementor jerked haughtily toward Drakken - "I do not go around announcing ALL MY PLANSES! I do not tell them EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE NEEDING TO KNOW -"

"It's an Element Eradicator."

This time, all eyes went to Drakken. There was a gleam of intelligence in his voice, something you rarely heard. And his face was so _there_, so intent, that Kim instantly knew he was right.

Dementor looked as if he'd been sprayed by a skunk he'd thought was deodorized. "Vhat makes you think THAT?" he said smoothly. But not quite as smoothly as before.

"I saw something being advertised for sixty bazillion dollars at HenchCo," Drakken replied importantly. Not even Shego bothered to tell him that "bazillion" wasn't a real number. "It was the heart to an Element Eradicator." He straightened his shoulders and lifted his huge chin. "You type in a periodic number, and every atom of that element will be erased from existence! The entire planet would be ruined! People could be k-k-killed!"

Kim had never known him to stutter before. Dementor was sneering, as though to say, _Do you BELIEVE this guy? He can't even say "killed"!_

"It's a giant battery, the heart is." Drakken shaped a square with his hands. "And if you cut the PURPLE wires and yank it out with TONGS, you can effectively SHUT DOWN the whole MACHINE!"

His shouting was louder than Dementor's had ever been, and his contacts swam as he sought Kim's gaze. With all the subtlety of a charging grizzly, Drakken gave her a wink.

The eruption Kim had been anticipating happened. Dementor exploded at Drakken, pinning him back against the wall and holding him there with both cubic hands and a glare cold and sharp and steely as a knife. Drakken licked his lips, over and over and over, and Kim could hear his nervous breathing from seven feet away.

To her surprise, Dementor didn't whip out a laser and fry Drakken's head with it. As Kim watched, cautiously, working to decide whether to go for the Element Eradicator or save Drakken's tail, Dementor gave that fake, frosty smile again, his teeth one long, white, shiny blade that would have looked right at home on a guillotine.

"Oh, Drakken, I was just KIDDING ABOUT!" Dementor shrieked. "Put it in the past, VHY DON'T VE?"

While Drakken was blinking in bewilderment, Dementor slipped a hand around behind him and slapped him hard at the base of his shoulder blade. Drakken hiccuped a yelp of pain, genuine pain. And Kim couldn't ignore a cry like that, not even from her arch-nemesis.

Especially not after he'd just clued her in on how to defeat Dementor. Kim wouldn't be enough of a snob to not be grateful for that.

She was at his side in an instant. "What's wrong?"

Drakken's deflating ego hissed through his teeth. "My back," he whimpered. "I have a really, really bad back. And I think he threw something out in it again!"

The Red Cross class Kim taken back in freshman year clicked into place. She took a gentle step toward Drakken, but he jerked his body away as if she were holding a hypodermic needle. "No! Don't touch me!" Drakken's voice had the raw edge of a rash that had been scratched too much.

Sheesh. If he was going to be like _that_. . .

Kim retrained her focus on Dementor's weapon-of-the-hour. When Dementor rose to block her path, Kim gave him a good kick to the chest. It didn't send him sprawling the way it would have Drakken, but it _did _succeed in surprising him back a few feet.

_Now _Dementor had that warning orange tint. Evidently his composure only worked with people he could easily consider inferior. He threw the helmeted head back and cried, "Mine HENCH -"

But that was as far as he got before his mouth was smothered by a green glove. "Oooh, sorry." Shego hooked her other arm around Dementor's chest, so that he had no choice but to lean on her if he was going to stand at all. "It's time to use our indoor voices, boys and girls."

"Vhat is zis?" Dementor scoffed, muffled, from between Shego's fingers. "Now you are going to HELP _Fraulein _Possible disintegrate mine amazing veapon?"

His harsh breath ruffled Shego's glossy bangs, but not another inch of her budged. "I'm not gonna help her," she said, the typical Shego-disinterest dripping. "But I don't have to stop her."

Yeah. Major points for Shego. She would have been a totally cool person if she ever gave up that whole everybody-must-die thing.

Kim launched herself at the Element Eradicator. The Kimmunicator's infrared scanner revealed a sophisticated laser system invisible to the naked eye. She dropped to the floor and slid, feet first, elbows tucked down toward her belly button, right under it. Kim could feel the pulsing energy just above her head and knew she'd barely made it below the lowest beam.

From there it was a simple matter of sending Rufus down into the machine to gnaw through the purple wires. Dementor continued to protest as Shego body-checked his every move, and Drakken still moaned piteously from the corner. It rubbed at Kim, not being able to fix it all at once. Saving the world, though, had to take priority.

Rufus also unscrewed a panel whose heat alone told Kim the battery lay beneath it. When she flung it open, everything in her body coming to a focus in that way she lived for, what looked like a treasure in a video game stared back at her. It was nestled cozily into the spray of wires and gears, glowing blue-white.

Kim took a deep breath and held out her hand. "Tongs," she said, in the same tone her mother used to request scalpels.

Ron poked her in the nose with a pair of salad tongs he must have been carting around in his backpack since Home Ec last semester.

That was what she got for not being specific. "My bomb tongs," Kim clarified, trying not to sigh _too_ heavily. "In _my _backpack."

Ron rifled through it for a moment, then grandly presented her with the tongs. "Great," she said. "Now hold this thing open for me so I can disarm it - please and thank you."

Her best friend flexed a flat bicep. "Oh, we can do that, KP," he boasted. "Who knows, some _Mystical Monkey Power _might even kick in!" Ron couldn't seem to resist a peek back over his shoulder at the villains, as if he honestly thought he could intimidate them.

With both Ron and Rufus propping the panel up, Kim slipped her tongs into the oily darkness of the Element Eradicator. Ron was freaking out less and less with every mission, she noticed. The fact that he had so much faith in her was enough to keep Kim's hands steady as she bumped the tongs around. Metal scraped metal, her heart did a satisfied turn, and she pulled out the battery. The machine groaned in agony, and one by one, its bright lights snapped off.

"All right, KP!" Ron squawked, letting the panel fall with a thud. He slammed his hand toward hers, their ritual high-five stopped only by the death gadget she held. "Heh. . . I owe you a high-five later," he said sheepishly.

_And another evil plot bites the dust._ Victory curled into a calm ball in Kim's chest, expanding her beyond her petite frame. This was always the most awesome moment of her day.

Something green and black moved at the side of Kim's vision. It didn't surprise her that, next thing she knew, the tongs were in Shego's grasp. The girl moved without sound or touch.

FanTAStic. This was going to be the staff incident all over again, wasn't it?

So she couldn't grab it back without the tongs, which Shego's blades were clamping down on so tight they would have to be pried off with crowbars. Maybe she had a sweater or something in her backpack she could wrap it in -

Shego, though, couldn't have cared less about the battery's lethal potential. She charged toward Dementor and daintily dropped it like a cement block on the very ends of his shoes, where it hopefully wouldn't smash any toes. Dementor sent up a howl, and Kim spit out a laugh.

That was _one_ way to do it.

Prying his feet free from the boots would probably occur to Dementor way sooner than it would to Drakken, so Kim took the liberty of dental-flossing his hands together. Dementor was left hunched over in his best Quasimodo impersonation, spewing threats that no one listened to.

In Kim's mind, though, she added another full-out enemy to the roster. Sure, it was majorly encouraging, that instant when the villain discovered they couldn't write her off. But that meant someone else hating her, going out of their way to try and flatten her, plots running the risk of becoming personal. Even Ron, who had wanted an arch-foe of his own so badly, appeared to be realizing that that wasn't a good thing after their run-in with Monkey Fist on school picture day.

Shego curled herself over Dementor's hunchbacked form and lifted her lip at him. "Look," she growled, "Dr. D may not be very smart or very capable or very evil - "

"All right, Shego, we get the _point_!" Drakken interrupted. He was beyond the borders of testiness.

" - but he doesn't have to trick me into working for him." Shego shoved her cold, dangerous beauty closer to Dementor, looking absolutely nothing like Wonder Woman. Kim almost felt sorry for Dementor, but it was kind of fun to watch Shego cut loose on somebody who actually deserved it.

"But. . . but . . . VHY?" Dementor sputtered.

Shego frosted him with a smirk. "Wouldn't you like to know?" She tossed her head back toward Kim. "Catch ya later, Kimmie - and, yeah, I do mean that literally."

The slitted cat-eyes relinquished respect for a fraction of a second, then hardened again. Shego wrapped her fingers around Drakken's wrist and started for the door. Drakken followed, like he always did, wincing with every step. Nana would have said he looked "wretched." It must have been adding to his pain to be so vulnerable in front of all the people he hated most in the world.

Something wrenched in Kim's chest for him. She couldn't stand watching someone leave hurting. She had to at least _try_ to help.

"Go on home, take some Ibuprofen, and keep your back supported," Kim heard herself say in her school-nurse voice.

Drakken nodded, blinking at her from the muddle.

Well, since he was in the mood for taking advice. . . "And maybe stop trying to take over the world?" Kim suggested, only half sarcastically. "I mean, seriously, it would make all of our lives so much easier."

Obviously left with no retort, Drakken stuck out his tongue and waggled it at Kim - behavior even the Tweebs were beginning to outgrow. It would have been the perfect chance to give him another wedgie, but ONE of them had to act older than five.

Besides, as she watched him shuffle out the door, pants once again hanging listlessly on his hips, Kim couldn't stir up anything more than mild annoyance. She pressed in Global Justice's number on her cell phone, grabbed Ron, and made her own exit.

They were back at school just in time for fifth period. Kim slipped into her seat with as little fanfare as possible, nodding politely at Mr. Barkin. By now, her absences pretty much explained themselves.

Barkin cricked his neck, folded his arms across his beefy chest, and surveyed the class. "Good afternoon, young students!" he said, each syllable barely this side of a yell. "Mrs. Brown will be absent today, owing to an unfortunate encounter with the 'Club Banana spring rush.'" He twitched his fingers into quotation marks, eyes boring into them all. "Turn to page 43 in your books - "

Kim eased _Economics Today_ out of her desk and glanced up just in time to see Barkin pressing his hands together on the desk that was his for the day. "Also - I'm very much aware that today is St. Patrick's Day. And I would like you all to note my _green _tie." He adjusted the necktie in question, so deep a pine green it could be mistaken for black, pinning Ron especially with a glare.

"Aw, man," she heard Ron mutter.

Kim gave him an I-feel-you smile and counted her blessings that THAT plan had been grounded before Ron got himself expelled. The textbook tugged her in with tales of risk vs. reward. Something that would cost you more if it failed than it would gain you if it succeeded wasn't worth it.

If only somebody would tell Drakken and Dementor that keeping a whole planet going wouldn't be a piece of cake, financially. Maybe they would reconsider. Although Kim sincerely wondered if they were able to listen to reason anymore. Or if they gave a rip what happened to the rest of the world under their rule.

But for a moment all Kim could see on the page was the terror in Drakken's being as he'd stepped in on Shego's behalf. It was a reassuring picture. Baggy pants and stained shirt and all.

**Him**

Dr. Drakken adeptly juggled his armful of genius blueprints. Despite his efforts, one tube slid off his shoulder and plummeted. Drakken tried to catch it on a broad, bony elbow, but the thing flapped to the floor anyway.

Doodles. He'd have to come back for it. After he'd finished setting up _outside_ - per doctor's orders.

"You're very pale," Dr. Truman had said at his appointment yesterday, running intruding fingers over Drakken's finicky flesh. "How much sun do you get?"

Drakken had blinked. "Not much." Why would he? Everything interesting was inside. In laboratories.

Dr. Truman had frowned in that concerned-physician manner that set Drakken's stomach to swirling. He'd deflected it by reciting all the information he'd learned about how tanning was actually bad for you, UV damage, skin cancer, all that not-fun stuff.

Even as Drakken snagged another rebellious roll in his teeth, he could still hear Truman's response: _"That's all very true, Drakken. But you're bordering on Vitamin D deficiency here."_

That, Drakken knew, wasn't good either. Not enough Vitamin D, and your spine would curve backward and your head would swell and your toes would explode. Or something like that.

And since you couldn't conquer the world without toes - and since he was currently occupying a suburban lair that actually had a front and back yard - Dr. Drakken was venturing into the great outdoors.

He hurled his back against the front door, which he remembered having left unlocked. Sure enough, it flew open and sprawled Drakken face-up onto the porch. He cradled the blueprints protectively to his chest so they wouldn't be swept away by the fierce, howling wind -

Except there _wasn't _any fierce, howling wind. Just a gentle breeze. The air it carried was surprisingly warm.

Er, well, yes. It _was_ the last day of March, according to his watch, which was so state-of-the-art it displayed both time _and_ date. The month that, according to the old saying, went in like a lion and out like a lamb.

That had never quite made sense to Drakken. March neither roared nor baaed, and it couldn't have either a flowing mane _or_ a curly wool coat. It was an abstract noun, a concept rather than a thing that could be touched - and Drakken couldn't _believe_ he'd remembered that from seventh-grade English!

Like evil, Drakken thought as he headed back inside to claim his rogue blueprint. He could touch his machines, all smooth and shiny and cold, but not the evil itself. Even if he could reach inside himself and poke around, he wouldn't find anything tangible.

And it came and went, last week he'd had a perfect opportunity to slap Kim Possible right across the face - and hadn't taken it. He'd pulled back his hand on sheer impulse, driven by frustration far past the boiling point, when suddenly he'd lost his villain-sight. She was just a teenage girl, and he was a grown man getting ready to smack her - and his muscles went slack and he couldn't do it.

He'd dropped her in a shark tank instead.

If he reached inside himself, what would he find?

Drakken shook his head and grunted, tucking the blueprint safely into the crook of his arm. No, thinking about Kim Possible would only send his blood pressure - another of Truman's concerns - through the roof.

Whereas outside, there was no roof at all. Just an endless, glimmering sky the same shade as his skin, spreading above the whole world, marking it as his.

Drakken shivered with delight. He loved it when he got poetic like that.

Settling himself into a cross-legged sit on the porch, Drakken reached for the load of blueprints he'd dumped earlier. Oh, _yuck_! The bottom one had been resting on a glob of bird poop.

Drakken scowled. Of course - it was spring now, and the birds were coming back. Spring. With all its cutesy baby animals and its hopeful budding flowers, it was the most cheerful of the seasons, and therefore, every villain's least favorite.

He could see the signs of it all around him now. The leaves stirring on the trees, incongruous with the whole secret-lair atmosphere he was working to create. Soft, moist earth that would suck his boots right off if he wasn't careful. Dandelions closed for the night like pursed lips. The side of the building shaded the little flowers, so they didn't even know it wasn't night anymore. Suckers.

Drakken wanted to curl his lip like a teenage girl. Spring - bah, humbug. No, wait, that was for Christmas, and he actually _loved _Christmas. . .

But birds! He hated birds. Some guy dressed as a bird had tried to hurt Shego this very month, before Drakken had saved her. Drakken had hurt people before, and he knew he probably would again, but not just for the heck of it. And _Shego_? He would _never_ let anything happen to her!

He couldn't recall the creep's name - Aviary or some other bird-related term - but he could still see him in his mind. Scrawny and hunched like a vulture. Red-and-orange hair in deliberate spikes, as opposed to Drakken's untamed mop. Beady little eyes and a beak for a nose, a face that got its kicks hurting people. Well, not the face, but the person wielding it. Drakken despised many people, but he didn't think he'd ever hated one on sight before.

A bright red bird - a cardinal, was that what they were called? - chirped at Drakken from a nearby tree. He got goose bumps big as tumors. Was that one of Bird Guy's spies right now, signaling to his boss?

"You cannot have Shego!" Drakken hollered up at his crimson foe. "So don't even get any _ideas_!"

That seemed to startle the bird, because he flew from his perch, nearly colliding with another bird in midair. She - it was obviously a _she_, because her cheeks were blushed red as if with Mother's rouge - had a brilliant orange bill and reddish-brown feathers. A female cardinal. Maybe his girlfriend.

Another too-sweet aspect of spring. All the animals were pairing up, having babies. Which probably reminded Mother that she wanted grandkids, and she'd start nagging him about finding the right woman -

And Drakken was _far_ too busy for a relationship, what with world domination and all. Besides, even if he hadn't been, how would he go about finding the "right woman" anyway? Birds impressed each other with their interesting colors, but most women ran away screaming when they saw what an interesting color he was.

Drakken forced his attention back to the top blueprint, which was actually blank. He hadn't completely worked out all the details of his latest awesome plan.

Yet his hands were itching to draw, so Drakken put pencil to paper and drew a gigantic sphere. At least, it was _supposed_ to be a sphere. Unfortunately, it more closely resembled a plain old circle; Drakken wasn't especially skilled at drawing in 3-D. He could see it all in his mathematical brain, but it didn't translate well to his fingers.

Drakken pulled in irritation at his ponytail. There was nothing worse than being so astonishingly smart and so unable to show it - unless it was leftover, lukewarm broccoli for supper.

Struck with inspiration, Drakken felt his mouth perking up at the corners. He hunched over the paper and wrote, in enormous letters, _SPHERE of Doom!_

There! Now no one would mistake his orb for anything less impressive than it was. Though he'd tried to print precisely, the words had an upward scrawl, but Drakken decided he was satisfied.

All that remained was the question of what to do with it. Blotting out the sun would ruin his Vitamin D supply forever. Maybe he could store deadly remote-controlled nanobots in it - swap it for the Time Square ball - and program it to open and launch his assault at midnight on New Year's Eve!

Or was it New Year's Day? Which day got to claim all the excitement, the one that had just ended or the one that was just beginning?

Drakken wasn't sure. He just knew either one was so far away. It wasn't even April yet! Could he really wait eight more months?

Eight more months of _this_? Of running from lair to lair, of living in fear of Kim Possible instead of the other way around, of being the laughingstock of villainkind?

The answer was as obvious as the sudden, stifling heat that came over him. His normally just-the-right-fit lab coat pressed its seams into his shoulders. It made him feel claustrophobic.

Drakken rose to his feet and wobbled slightly, since the baby-pudge lines in them were now damp with sweat. He had no choice but to squat awkwardly and peel off the squishy, size-six black boots and the socks he'd had to buy in the children's section to keep them from bunching in loose folds around his ankles. The porch, though it looked smooth and sanded, grated against his soles, much like the unconquered world grated against his backbone.

And when something rankled him like that, it blobbed everything else out. There would be no scheming until he could get rid of it.

Grunting a "NNNGH!", Drakken flung himself dramatically over the porch railing and landed, barefoot, in a patch of new baby grass. Its unexpected coolness whisked away his sweat, and he gasped out loud at how marvelous it felt.

Drakken remembered grass as angular like his cheekbones, slicing into Drew's tender young legs while he chased Eddy around the yard. _This _grass was soft and wispy, chick down, brushing his skin with a feathery touch that stopped just short of tickling.

Maybe, Drakken thought, as he rocked his heels on and off the lush grass, maybe spring's cheeriness wasn't counter to his villainy after all! He'd heard that fresh air really inspired the creative process.

So - okay. What _else_ could he do with a giant metallic sphere? Beam mind-control signals out through it. Or maybe he could sneeze on it, coat it with germs, so that whoever put their hand on its shiny, golden surface - it _had_ to be golden - and then touched their faces would be infected with the most awful diseases known to mankind. The common cold, which was far nastier than it sounded, strep throat, _chicken pox_. . .

Drakken was giving his hands a wicked rub when he got the sensation that he was no longer alone. He whipped around, breath squeezing in his lungs, grimace freezing. He wasn't ready to face Kim Possible! It was a Saturday, so Shego wasn't here, and it was never a guarantee that his henchmen would be of any help -

But it wasn't Kim Possible, or even the buffoon or his little bald gerbil creature. It was a rabbit. A _bunny_. The textbook definition of "too cute." Long ears. Plush tummy. Twitchy nose. Gag him with a test tube.

It stayed perfectly still, though, stiller than Drakken had ever seen a bunny sit. Its nose twitched nervously at the air, and Drakken could have sworn he heard its little heart ticking away like a metronome. It was frightened of him.

Drakken found himself inching toward it, his chest softening. Its eyes were the same deep black-brown as his. Something about that made him want to tell it everything was okay, that the world would soon be in good hands -

What was _wrong_ with him? Drakken backed up a few steps, shaking his head until the ends of his hair lashed against his cheeks. Here he was, finally managing to scare some bunny -

Heh. Some bunny. Drakken snickered to himself. That was kind of an unintentional pun.

The Oh Boyz song he'd had stuck in his head all morning burst out of his mouth with great humor. "Is there really somebunny for me?" Drakken sang in a post-pubescent version of Nicky-Nick's voice. "Does anybunny understand what I'm going through?"

That evidently surprised the bunny, because it turned around and bolted across the yard.

"Humph," Drakken mumbled as he watched the thing's cotton-ball tail shrink from his vision. "Everybunny's a critic."

He should have growled, but the gentle kiss of the grass against his feet made him chortle instead.

Drakken padded forward, eyes analyzing every bud and bloom - purely for scientific reasons, of course. There was always the possibility that he could use plants in one of his plots someday.

Something went _squoosh_ beneath him. Mud oozed lusciously between his toes.

Drakken moaned out loud in pleasure. It was Mother Nature's equivalent of a massage. He was sure even Dementor, with all his fancy HenchCo products and his pampered lifestyle, had never experienced such luxury.

And he never would. Not if Drakken had anything to do with it.

He could turn his Sphere of Doom into the world's biggest magnet and stick Dementor to it by his stupid metal helmet. . . mask. . . whatever it was. The man would only be able to watch helplessly as Drakken took the world by force and proved himself the superior mind!

Right. The plan. He had to concentrate on the plan.

Just to make sure none of his vicious cunning left him, Drakken glared at the bird that landed in a branch a foot from his face. Little, brown, deceptively cute. An agent of Bird-Man if he'd ever seen one.

"You're not fooling me!" he bellowed at it. The bird cocked its head - _sweetly_, Drakken would have thought, if he didn't know better - and let out a tiny "chirrup."

The sound, for some reason, drove Drakken's lips together. He wanted to hate the bird, the bunny, the spring. It was happy, and it mocked him, and it threatened to make off with his evil. He couldn't be sucked in!

Could. Not. Be.

But the breeze beckoned him to follow it forward, and Drakken obeyed like a charmed snake. A very fierce, venomous snake who was just tucking his fangs back in for a while because the day was so glorious. The mud wasn't gross and runny, the way mud sometimes was after a flash-flood rain, and it wasn't that dry, dusty stuff that made his throat thirsty, either. It was the perfect consistency, doughy and succulent and footprint-ready.

It lured Drakken to the edge of the hill. Well, technically, it wasn't a _hill_. Just an incline, the mere downward slope of a negative linear graph. Today, though, the green expanded it, opened it up to inviting possibilities, and - it was a hill. There was no other word for it.

And for the moment, Drakken was ruler of all he surveyed.

The breeze touched his skin, and he sniffed a scent that could only be described as _floral_, unexpected and pleasant after the stale winter. Drakken struggled to retain his evil-scientist grumpiness by reminding himself that what he was smelling was pollen, which brought allergies, which brought misery. Oooh - maybe he could cover his SPHERE of Doom! with allergens, position it in a highly trafficked area, and watch half the planet's population crumble.

Drakken smirked as he imagined Kim Possible rubbing at those itchy, watery eyes that you could barely keep yourself from clawing out. Then he chuckled right out loud, delighting himself with the sound. Fresh sunlight washed over him, and Drakken could feel his black hair soaking it up, storing it away. The warmth soothed the joints that were getting old before the rest of him. Something sweet filled his mouth, as if he'd just scarfed a mouthful of yummy candy.

Wait - he had a project to focus on, didn't he?

That's right! Drakken set his face into its most menacing scowl and lowered himself, one bone at a time, to the ground. Whipped off his gloves and ran his fingers into the silky grass until he had goose bumps again. Then finally stretched out flat on his back and stared at the sky.

At the clouds. How long had it been since he'd looked for shapes in the clouds, besides the purple towers that meant thunderstorms? Years and years, at least. To the outside world, he must have looked as peaceful and lazy as a cat napping in a sunbeam.

But if there was one thing Dr. Drakken was not, it was lazy. He merely searched the clouds for inspiration, for new insight into how to get his plan off the ground. That cloud could have passed for a 3-D rendering of the hovercraft, flying the SPHERE of Doom! around the globe to spread whatever horrific thing he decided to put in it. And there it was, attached to a satellite orbiting the Earth, spewing miniature sharks that would grow to the size of Tokyo once they hit water. Since the planet was three-fourths ocean, his odds were good.

And there was Snowman Hank, smiling down at him.

Drakken let out the yawn only pure comfort could produce and wondered, vaguely, if he'd ever fallen asleep last night. Sometimes it was hard to tell his dreams from his schemes.

He rolled onto his side, nuzzled his face into the grass, and tucked his hands under his chin. His eyelids closed, absorbing more sunlight, but the fatigue Drakken guessed he was supposed to feel wouldn't come. The world was alive and awake, and he had to be a part of it! The life inside him couldn't stay still.

The roar of a jet engine popped Drakken's ears as a white streak cut across the sky. On impulse, he waved, though he knew, rationally, he would be nothing more than a tiny blue speck to the passengers. If that.

Drakken frowned to himself. He didn't _want_ to be a tiny blue speck. To disappear into the background where not one single person would ever see him for the genius he was, the amazing person he was striving with everything in him to be. It knotted him up inside, into loops and swirls that blackened the sunshine. Drakken's goodwill was no match for the ever-present churning that went from chest to throat to stomach, never staying in one place long enough for him to deal with.

It salivated for the world, and it would eat him if it didn't get it.

Suddenly it was as if Drakken had aged decades. He got slowly to his muddy feet and swiped at his cheeks and directed one last longing look at the clouds. He couldn't wait another eight months, had to do it now -

And then there was the grass, tickling insistently at his feet. Whisking him away to another time, another place, where he could spare an afternoon of relaxation.

No, he couldn't wait eight more months. But he could wait another day, if it was a day like this. After all, spring had turned the world new and vulnerable, and it would have been a shame to destroy it. He would give himself some time to regain his cynicism.

Drakken sank to his knees, plucked a dandelion, and stuck its stem between his teeth. He'd heard the greens were edible. But - _eee-ew_! It tasted like curdled cauliflower.

He spat it out, wiped the remaining offending pieces from his tongue. A sigh came out of Drakken's nose, loud and long. There was something fragile, something like happiness, in his heart. Once he owned the world, it would never leave, but for now he had to grab what he could.

So when a bird chirped from a tree, Drakken chirped back at it. It fell silent in confusion.

There! _Try to figure THAT one out, Birdcage-Brain!_ Drakken thought triumphantly. Avery Avian or whatever his name was would be too busy going mad over it to come after Shego.

Shego, who had chosen him over Dementor. Drakken could barely breathe on the fact for fear it would shatter. Everything in him had wanted to scoop Shego up into a victory-hug once they were safely home - well, everything except the vertebrae that Dementor had so meanly knocked out of place. Yet her eyes were pointed at him, and so Drakken had kept his hands to himself. Boy, next time he saw Professor Dementor, he would laser him right in half. . .

Still, Shego had _chosen_ to come back with him! Even though she had those four brothers, he just might have been her family anyway.

The thought exploded inside Drakken like a bashed-in pinata, scattering party favors all through his inner workings. He couldn't catch hold of any of them, except in snatches -

_- evil family - _

_- Shego chose - _

_- hates Dementor - _

_- never be alone - _

_- chose me, she chose me - _

The grandness was overwhelming. Drakken clapped a palm over his mouth and squealed a tires-coming-to-an-abrupt-halt noise into it. And his whole body fluttered with wiggly energy that couldn't be ignored.

So he flopped tummy-down onto the grass, closed his eyes, and rolled down the hill. Slowly at first, having to push himself after half a rotation, then faster and faster. When Drakken chanced a glance, all he could see was green, above him, below him, as if he were wrapped safely in Shego's jacket. Giggles rose up from his belly and spewed from his lips, and the thumping matched his heartbeat, only bigger.

Spinning, tumbling, soaring. The whole world would hear that heartbeat someday, and doggone it, they would listen!

Drakken squeezed his eyes closed again. _Please, please, please, please, please, _he begged someone. Everyone.

When he finally rocked to a halt at the bottom of the hill, Drakken's spikes were littered with twigs and the last of winter's dead leaves. His lab coat had grass stains streaking down its front. He was sloppy, disheveled, completely unprofessional -

And so happy. Drakken kicked back his head and laughed as he wiped a glob of mud from his scarred cheek. Soooo happy.

Hey, there was another dandelion! He'd heard if you picked one and held it to your chin, you could tell if you liked butter - somehow - like if you turned yellow or something. Maybe that was what had happened to Dementor. Too many dandelion experiments.

Snicker. He hoped so. That was so much more embarrassing than a lab accident.

Not surprisingly, Drakken found he tested positive for liking butter. He _did_, too, on his pancakes and his toast and Mother's homemade biscuits that you could pull apart in fluffy layers. And you could thaw a pat, turning it from solid to liquid, which he sometimes did just to reassure himself the laws of matter were still being upheld.

Yes, butter was good. He'd have to find a way to work it into one of his evil plots. Perhaps he'd melt it all down the sides of his lair so that Kim Possible's little suction cups wouldn't be able to grab on! _Take _that_, Little Miss I-Can-Do-Anything!_

And with that, Drakken was content to spend the rest of the afternoon with the dandelions and the downy grass and the sunshine.

And that night, as he bathed in oatmeal, he remembered reading somewhere that mosquitoes were really attracted to the color blue.


	7. This March

**~More STD build-up. Enjoy! Well, that might not be the right word. . . :/**

**And thank you, thank you, thank you! to everyone who reviewed. Can't believe how many I got. You don't know how much that means to me. ~  
**

**Her  
**

_Got a date for prom yet?_ the poster screamed from Middleton High's yellow-washed walls.

_Uh, how about "no"? _Kim Possible wanted to cry back. _With a side dish of "You are SO not helping"?_

If Monique were here, she'd have given Kim a mini-massage and reassured her that she wasn't the only girl in school not to be asked yet. "It's still over a month away, girl," she would have said. "That's enough time for _both _of us to get dates." Then she would have smiled her mischief-laced, we're-in-this-together, Monique-smile, and Kim could have gone back to being levelheaded.

Except Monique had a guidance counselor meeting to wrap up the school day. Kim was alone with her locker and the poster that spelled out her dilemma in purple Arial font. Her entire coolness was at stake here.

It hadn't escaped Bonnie Rockwaller's notice, either. The girl was taking the opportunity to make Kim's life the fifth circle of Hades. Just yesterday, Bonnie had asked her, in a tone that did everything but pour artificial sweetener on her head, what her plans were for prom night. She _hadn't_ added, "Because you obviously won't be going," and she hadn't needed to. It was written in her smirk.

Kim had rolled her eyes and responded with, "Some of us have more important things to worry about than prom, Bonnie." That was true. For all she knew, Wade could call her that night and she'd need to drop everything in order to save Spain from mutant killer whales or something. Kim almost hoped that would be the case. At least then she'd have an excuse for not showing up with a quarterback on her arm.

Then Kim had flipped her hair and marched away. And prayed Bonnie didn't pick up on it, the little bit of shakiness to her tossing hand, the slight rolling-forward of the perfect posture she usually prided herself on. Kim was fully aware of the dangers if she had.

Bonnie wasn't above trying to bump a not-cool-enough girl from the squad. Kim had always been the one to speak up and stop her, with the quiet support of most of the others. Now the tables had turned, and Kim was the only dissenter.

The loneliness was frightening, and Kim wasn't used to being frightened.

All of the other cheerleaders had boyfriends now. Not all of the guys had done the inviting yet, but it was way obvious they were going to. Of course. They were as desperate to cement their status as the girls were. And the fact that Kim was the _captain _just made the squad look even worse -

Man, it was disturbing to know how Bonnie's mind worked.

And then, of course, there was Bonnie herself. With the stylishly-controlled shag to her brown hair, the slightly exotic slant to her blue-green eyes, and the skin a mouth-watering caramel, she had no shortage of boys dying to accompany her to any school event. Brick had asked her to prom weeks ago, complete with an elaborate bouquet and more gentlemanly bowing than any decent guy should have ever wasted on Bonnie. It didn't surprise Kim. Bonnie had made it quite clear that _she_ would ask _Brick _if he didn't get on the ball.

Actually, Kim was surprised that Bonnie hadn't sent out invites to every member of One-Lane Street, that new boy band she was drooling over.

Okay, so Kim liked them too. _Not _just for how hot they looked with their shirts off, though.

"What's wrong, KP?"

She turned to see Ron leaning over her, his brow puckered in concern.

Kim heaved a sigh she didn't feel like explaining. "_That_'s wrong." She pointed at the poster.

Ron followed her finger with his eyes. They grew puzzled, then understanding, then puzzled again. "You're upset because you don't have a date to prom yet?" he guessed.

Saying it out there in the open like that, it sounded so far beyond lame, but Kim nodded anyway. If there was anyone she could trust, it was Ron.

Sure enough, Ron dropped his arm across her shoulders. "S'alright. I don't either," he said.

Kim bit her tongue and wished she could chomp down on her brain, too. Still, the thought came through anyway: _That's really NOT comforting._ After all, Ron had never been popular. He didn't have anything to lose.

She, on the other hand, could lose the reputation she'd been working to build since sixth grade. She could become an outcast in her senior year - and she wasn't as good-natured as Ron. She wouldn't be able to stand it.

"Seriously, though, Kim," Ron continued. "Do you know how many guys would kill to take you to prom?" His friendly freckled face suddenly turned shy - or was that jealousy? Girls weren't exactly falling all over themselves to go with _him_. "I mean, not _kill_ - that would be awful - but they might - "

He yammered on, and Kim subconsciously tuned him out. Yeah, Ron was right. What he'd failed to grasp was that they were the nerdy guys. Kim had noticed a boy gazing dreamily at her all throughout first period. She didn't know his name, but she recognized his face - a face so covered with pimples he could basically be one giant rash. Kim felt sorry for him, but - _yikes_. Hadn't he ever heard of Clearasil? Not the kind of guy you showed up at a dance with.

Bonnie had already stated, flatly, that no cheerleader would dare be caught within a mile of a non-jock from this point on - with approved exceptions. Like Bonnie's ultimatums meant anything to Kim.

No, Bonnie was easy to defy. It was the entire structure of the high school pyramid that was turning Kim's mouth dry. She knew it was ferociously shallow, but she didn't especially want to be known as "that one redheaded cheerleader who saved the world - and went out with Alfred Snodgrass III."

_No offense, Alfred_.

Kim almost groaned out loud. She didn't _want_ to want to arrive on the arm of some hunk who made Brick and the others look like Pimple Boy just for the sake of doing it. For the sake of keeping herself on top. For the sake of watching Bonnie turn red in the face and stammer indignantly, Drakken-style.

But she _did _want it.

A cheerleader had to have her standards, after all. Kim could almost hear Bonnie reciting them: _No mullets. No socks-with-sandals. No losers._

Of course, Kim's definition of "loser" was pretty different from Bonnie's. There was a day when Kim would have had the guts to bring Cousin LARRY, just to watch Bonnie freak out.

That was BEFORE she became the lone boyfriend-less cheerleader. Her fellow cheerleaders varied in niceness - none as nasty as Bonnie, all too afraid of the little vixen to stand up to her. If only Bonnie could come down with, like, the plague or something and have to be quarantined until graduation, everything would turn out perfect.

Whatever. That was definitely not happening.

So Kim needed a guy, a jock or a prep or somebody else cool. Somebody not even Bonnie could look down on. Kim closed her eyes, just for a blink's time, and pictured a handsome kid arriving to save her - not from some bad guy she could easily take out on her own, but from the impending threat on her social life.

Even so, Kim refused to play the shallow-cheerleader role. Whoever she went with wasn't going to just be arm candy. He would still have to be smart, and nice, and chivalrous. And not a player like Hirotaka.

"You know what I've never understood?" Ron asked all of a sudden. Some days, the boy could read her mind, and others, he remained completely oblivious even to the things she was _trying_ to share with him. Kim hoped he fell into the "clueless" range today.

"Duff Killigan. He wants to cover the whole world in grass, make it a giant golf course, all that?"

Yep. Clueless.

Her friend seemed to shrink inside his red sweater. All right, maybe he _was _translating her turned-to-the-side face.

Kim dragged her eyes away from the poster, grateful for the change in subject. She would much rather discuss how whacked her foes were than that unfamiliar knotting inside. "I know, it makes no sense, but since when do villains care about that?" she said.

"Yeah - but - the _oceans_!" Ron flung out his arms dramatically, banging one knuckle against someone's locker. It was at once obnoxious and endearing. "What the heck does he think he's gonna do with _those_?"

Kim could only shrug. "Make them giant water traps?" she suggested with her extremely limited knowledge of golf. "Look, Duff's sanity is kind of questionable, so I don't know if he's even CONSIDERED - "

And then a voice that wasn't Ron's interrupted her. "Kim - can I talk to you?" it asked in a tiny peep.

Kim twisted to see Tara standing a few feet away, watching her cautiously. One hand rubbed the opposite arm, as if the school's constantly frigid temperature were freezing her. The short-cut cheerleader's uniform didn't offer much in the way of insulation, either.

This wasn't just cold, though. Tara looked nervous, not an unusual sitch. Kim felt a tug at her stomach - a you-must-fix-this tug. It would be refreshing to care about someone else right about now, anyway.

"In private?" Tara added. Her eyes skittered over Ron, who was looking back with his shoulders drawn together and one foot bumping against the ground. One of Ron's many ways of showing he was major uncomfortable.

Kim took pity on both of them. She hooked her arm around Tara's neck and glanced back at Ron, raising one eyebrow at him.

Ron nodded about twelve times. His face plainly read, _I don't get women, but I'll let you go do your thing._

Kim shot him a grateful thumbs-up and motioned toward the girls' restroom. "In here," she told Tara.

Bonnie just better not be in there giving her lip gloss an after-school touch-up. If the girl started in on her now, Kim wasn't sure she'd be able to refrain from, as Ron put it, "kicking her biscuits."

Fortunately, the bathroom was empty of even a janitor, much less Middleton High's self-appointed monarch. Most of the cheerleaders preferred the locker room to stalls whose latches may or may not undo themselves during the changing process. That was _one_ thing Kim couldn't blame them for.

Kim steered Tara to a private little nook in the back, right next to a big vase of fake flowers meant to make the bathroom look homier. As if. Kim leaned herself casually against the wall and zoomed in on Tara, who had only recently passed her in height. "So, what's the sitch, Tara?"

Tara's fingers slid over the pleats of her purple-and-orange skirt, apparently searching for a button to fiddle with. "Um, well," she began. "Josh asked me to prom today."

Kim felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach - by Drakken, not his sidekick. It was a dull, weak pain that wouldn't keep her from getting back up.

"That's great, Tara!" Kim said - maybe with more cheerfulness than sincerity. "You're lucky. He's a good guy."

Tara's even-paler-than-Kim's skin went a dreamy pink, and Kim could see her working to force her thoughts away from fondness. Josh had that effect on girls. "Are you okay with that, though?" Tara asked worriedly. "You and him were a thing, and I know you don't have a date yet."

_Yeah, and thanks for reminding me._ With Tara's big, begging blue eyes on her, though, there was only one thing to say.

"It's over between Josh and me. Wasn't meant to be. But maybe you guys are." She playfully pressed the toes of their white sneakers together. "I mean, you're totally cute together."

Tara broke into a smile of relief and collapsed back against a paper towel dispenser. "Okay, good," she said. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings, and, besides, I read this story once where this girl's best friend started dating a guy they both liked, and the first girl got really jealous and killed the second girl -"

Good old Tara. She and Ron might have made a nice couple after all, except for that random phobia of all things Scandinavian Ron had developed at the start of the school year. Even Kim couldn't explain _that _one.

Kim had to swallow a giggle. "Well, you definitely don't have to worry about that," she said. "If anybody on the squad was going to pull that, it would be Bonnie."

Tara slapped both hands over her mouth. Laughter leaked between them, laced with reluctant guilt. "Kim!" Tara cried. "I know she can be mean sometimes, but she's not a _criminal_!"

Kim snorted. Yeah, murder was too much even for Bonnie. Other than that, though, she could have been a villainness-in-training. Shego would have whipped her pathetic insults and cliched cheerleader-in-charge act into shape in no time.

Now THERE was a greechy thought if Kim had ever had one.

Tara angled her head forward, so that her hair dipped in to form a curtain over her face. "Bonnie's not _that_ bad," she insisted. "As long as you don't make her mad."

Right. Every time Kim heard Bonnie's name, she pictured an entire hive of angry hornets. But she knew this wasn't an underling's effort to stay off Bonnie's hate list. This was Tara refusing to say anything bad about her so-called friend, because she couldn't have been less like Bonnie if she tried.

"Thanks -" Tara peeked out shyly from between the wavy panels - "for understanding."

Kim's throat got soft. "No," she said. "Thank _you_ for understanding."

There was nothing more that needed to be said. Tara glowed right down to the tip of her nose and gave Kim's hand a clammy squeeze. Kim wasn't sure if the sweat was Tara's or her own.

Tara bounced herself out the door. Kim lingered a little longer, straightening the plastic flowers and crossing to the mirror to make sure there wasn't a hair out of place. At the moment, those were the only details on the scene that she could fix.

And it kept her from going to hunt Bonnie down and rip her lips off for making this so hard for every kid in the stinkin' school. At least _she_ wasn't going with Josh, but even Brick was too good for her.

Whenever Kim flashed back to what she'd seen of Bonnie's family last fall when they had literally been joined at the hip, however, she could guess where the monster came from. Her mother, who squealed and called her baby names and seemed to think Bonnie was still a preschooler. (Not like Mom, who was patient and sympathetic and pretty cool for being forty.) Her sisters treating her like slime. (The Tweebs were little brats, but they'd been there for her when she needed them.) And her dad, who had an amazing job that made amazing money to provide Bonnie's amazing clothes but never showed up for any school event. (And Dad was on Mars half the time, but he came down for the kids.) Most villains _were_ victims first.

_That doesn't give her the right to torment the rest of us, though!_ Kim growled between her teeth and parked her elbows on the sink. The tension was eating a hole in her skull. Kicking a bad guy's tail would have been supremely rewarding right now.

All the cool boys at Middleton High were taken by now. If Kim wanted a date at all, she would have to meet somebody new -

Sure. And _where_ was she going to meet him? On a mission? She might as well bring DRAKKEN to prom.

Come to think of it, even Drakken hadn't made so much as a peep since January, which was almost as worrisome as the prom thing. So the only boy in her life was. . .

Ron.

Kim caught herself right before she toppled backward. Sixteen types of Kung Fu didn't necessarily make you graceful, at least not when the topic of guys came up.

But Ron wasn't a _guy_. He was. . . Ron. Her BFF. She was as comfortable around him as she was any girl - to the point that, when they'd both had fevers last year, she'd forgotten which friend she was with and suggested they paint each other's nails. Ron had gaped at her in horror for a solid minute, and then they'd laughed until they'd cried.

Not to mention it was hard to have romantic feelings for someone whose head you'd had to thrust out the window when he'd gotten bus-sick on a field trip in third grade. And again in freshman year. Totally unglamorous.

Kim righted herself, watching her cheeks drain in the mirror. Okay, nice thought. Maybe in some other universe, it would have even gone somewhere. In this one, it couldn't drown out Bonnie's looping hiss: _No losers._

That did NOT just go through her mind.

Kim gave herself a firm shake and strolled as professionally as she could toward the door. No, Ron _wasn't _a loser. But he was a geek and a dork and a low link on Middleton High's food chain. Sure, they'd gone to all the dances together when they were kids, but - this was junior _year_, not junior _high_. Cheerleaders didn't come on the arms of boys who still played in tree houses anymore.

Besides all that, if she _didn't_ locate a date in time, she would need Ron's friendship to cushion her fall from the top of the cheerleader pyramid. There was _really _no need to complicate that.

Kim let the bathroom door slap shut behind her. Ron was waiting for her out in the hall, ears flanking his head like the pair of protective stone lions outside the library. It'd be a shame if he ever grew into them. They could always tease a grin out of Kim.

The part of her that could do with some comfort wanted to run to him and spill everything, the way she always did eventually. Something nagged at her, though, in a voice even harder to ignore than Bonnie's: _Ron wouldn't get it. He'd try - but he wouldn't get it._

Kim threw Ron an automatic smile and headed for her locker. Before she could even get the first number spun, Ron was at her side, craning his neck down as if they were involved in some kind of conspiracy. When had _he _gotten taller than her, too? "More prom date stuff?" he guessed.

All right. So he wasn't as clueless as she'd thought. That, or she was losing control over her face even now.

"More prom date stuff," Kim said. She couldn't get her voice to perk this time.

Ron gave her a long look that almost convinced her there was wisdom behind all that goofiness. Then he wrinkled up his lips and went back to being an overgrown five-year-old. "I never understood why prom was so important," he told her. "I mean, it's just a dance. We've had, what, two or three of those already this year?"

It was _so_ not just a dance. It was a rite of passage, and Kim had never questioned why it was at the top of every semi-cool person's priority list. What mattered was that it _was_, and she had to find a way to wrestle it into submission.

She _and_ Ron. Kim hoped he could find a girl nice enough to take him. For Ron, the dances were more of a chance to show off his "moves" than his date, but that wouldn't keep him from being completely humiliated if he had to show up alone.

Wade was waiting for her when the locker creaked open. "Hi, Kim," he said - and then squinted, like she was a mile away and he couldn't quite make her out. "What's your ish?" His eyes came out of the squint and rounded with curiosity.

So she _was_ blushing. Awkweird. Kim leaned closer to the computer and dropped into _sotto voice_. "Girl stuff," she confided.

The poor kid went the shade of a chocolate-colored strawberry, and Kim remembered that was the phrase she customarily used to signal that she was PMSing. Despite the equal-opportunity embarrassment, it at least got him off her back.

"A-A-Anyway," Wade stammered, "there's trouble at the Lowerton Center for Sea Life."

"Drakken?" Kim asked hopefully. Seriously, it was scary that the man hadn't so much as shoplifted for over two months. Drakken wasn't the type to keep secrets.

Wade shook his head, beaming. He clearly relished the moment where he delivered key information, but he never dragged it out, which was one of the reasons he rocked. "Duff Killigan. He broke in and stole some top-secret new theorem on stimulating the growth of aquatic plants. My scans indicate he's heading for the Kelp Forest."

Of course he was.

Ron whooped and punched the air. "I was _right_! He finally thought about the oceans!" He jostled his way in beside Kim and nearly pressed his nose to the screen. "I was tellin' KP just this morning that it didn't make any sense, trying to turn the world into one giant golf course, 'cause - what about the oceans? And the mountains - those would be hard to play through!"

The eternal optimist. Kim was already imagining unsuspecting fish being choked by mounds of giant kelp they couldn't fight their way out of, but Ron was grinning the split-your-face-open thing that no quarterback could match. It was good to have him around.

Kim settled back into the folds of confidence like she would her favorite top. She could feel the game-expression molding itself into place. "Then we're on it," she said crisply. She grabbed Ron's sleeve and towed him across the sneaker-smudged floor. She still wasn't sure how she would even begin to go searching for a suitable boyfriend, but she _did_ know that Duff Killigan's scheme would end with him in a jail cell and the super-secret paper being returned to its rightful owner.

As for Drakken - he wasn't even worth worrying about at this point. So he had a case of mad scientist's block. It wasn't as if he were Hitler or Mussolini or someone. Whatever he was planning, it would be half-baked and haphazard and no big to foil.

Kim would have staked her prom date's life on it.

**Him**

"He'll take you farther than you wanna go

He'll keep you longer than you wanna stay

And it will cost you more than you ever thought you'd pay

He's waiting on the night to fall

The old man's coming to call

You don't see the writing on the wall

He'll never step out in the light

No, he's just biding his time

And as you slumber, he's gonna come and take it all

He's waiting on the night to fall

He's waiting on the night to fall"

-Casting Crowns

Dr. Drakken peeked over the top of _Villains_ magazine and scanned HenchCo's waiting room, all shiny and sleek and pretentious. He would own a place like this when he was ruler of the world. Heck, he'd own _all_ the places like this when he was ruler of the world!

Drakken squeezed his eyes shut and pictured himself living in a crystal fortress Superman himself would envy. In his huge, red bed where he would finally be able to sleep, secure in the fact that nothing was going to happen that was out of his control.

It occurred to Drakken that his mind had been on the same subject for over an hour so far. Generally by now, it had wandered off to the _Star Trek_ rerun he saw last night or to what he was going to have for dinner. That medicine really was doing him a galaxy's worth of good.

He had all his considerable brainpower honed in on The Plan: destroying Kim Possible - physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. One of those adverbs; Drakken wasn't picky as long as it was suitably awful.

All he had to do was find her weak spot. She had to have one, under all that saucy self-assurance. Professor Ship said all human beings had at least one. And that was _psychology_, that was _science_. Kim Possible might have been much feistier than she looked, but there was nothing in her that was stronger than science.

Drakken grunted to himself. Surely there must have been nightmares even in Kim Possible's perfect life. What populated them?

Not him, that was for sure. Ordinarily that knowledge would sag Drakken down into despair - if it hadn't been the very bit that made the whole thing perfect.

Kim Possible underestimated him so, she wouldn't suspect a thing. She'd not only be beaten, she'd be humiliated - and proven wrong. Oh so wrong.

There was some remark he'd made once, some remark that had turned her as red as the mercury in a thermometer. What was it? Something to do with. . . was it boys?

Drakken's grunt morphed into a snort. That would make sense. That was one of the things vapid little teenage girls like her were so consumed by. _Cool _boys, of course. Not nerds like that pathetic Drew Lipsky was.

Oooh - how he longed to inject Kim Possible with fear, to watch it rush to her eyes, where it was too deep to be hidden. He could taste the moment, and it was sweeter than donuts.

A month ago, Drakken had been concerned about the darkness that seemed to be swallowing him. That was before he found out it was friendly to its own kind, which finally included him.

He slept only in blips not long enough to produce nightmares. Drakken-energy coursed through him, leaving him wide-awake, tossing and turning as his heart thundered against his rib cage. While Kim Possible slept in her big square house, in her chic attic room, surrounded by everything she could ever want. . .

The fury inched up Drakken's forehead in increments of heat, as if he were a Doomsday device powering up to fire. He soothed it with imaginary videos of The Plan in motion. Instead of winding him up further, The Plan always doused the burn in his chest with a smooth, cold place. Drakken was loving that place. The stress was still there, but it was merely fuel, driving him toward his goal.

Some less-than-diabolical part of himself tried to win him back with thoughts of Snowman Hank, but Drakken shoved it aside. If he allowed himself to be distracted, he would go back to the scatterbrained, miserable, roiling half-villain he used to be, medicine or not. And that scared him worse than the rage.

Ah, if Dementor could see him now! He probably wouldn't even recognize him, toughened up like one big callus. _Certainly_ hewouldn't know what to make of Drakken's newfound concentration, the calmness he could whip out if absolutely necessary.

Drakken panned the room intently one more time to see if Dementor was, in fact, going to be around to witness this. Nope. Just a couple of HenchCo staff, wrinkling their noses in Drakken's direction while trying to appear that this was not, in fact, what they were doing.

He recognized the looks on their pinched faces. Dislike that refused to even evolve into distrust, because they simply didn't consider Drakken formidable enough.

It would have stabbed Drakken to the core if the cold place had left any room for self-doubt. He would show them. He would show them all! Their puny little office was nothing he couldn't have destroyed if he'd wanted to.

Boom.

But The Plan must be followed at any cost. If that meant he had to wait a little longer to blow Hench to kingdom come, so be it.

It was time to set the next stage into motion. Drakken faked a sneeze into his lap as his finger landed precisely on the button that would activate the little knob he'd stuck on the exterior of the north wall. If his calculations were correct - and why wouldn't they be? - the thing would start flashing and beeping and whirring instantly. It was perfectly harmless, actually, but Hench was so paranoid about security he'd have all eyes on it.

Eyes that rolled back into their heads as soon as they fell on Drakken. Eyes that would surely pop from their very sockets when they saw he had bested them.

If they didn't figure it out for a while, though, that was okay. The Plan had to be kept top-secret, and there was no sense in arousing anyone's suspicions. There would be plenty of time for gloating once he was their supreme overlord.

Sure enough, the clicks and beeps startled the guy behind the reception desk, a too-blond kid who was probably still in high school. Hench was hooking them younger and younger these days. Blondie punched a button on his desk and hollered, "Security alert! I repeat, security alert!"

Everyone in the room who wasn't an evil genius sprang into action. Drakken hid a snicker behind the magazine. The imbeciles didn't even realize they were playing right into his hands.

Hench, the big cheese himself, deigned to enter the waiting room. Could this _get_ any better?

The evil stirred in Drakken's heart, like Pandora's box aching to be opened. It was so beautiful it almost hurt.

As was the expression on Hench's face. His corporate tan had paled, and a few strands of hair - his perfect, black-halves-split-by-gray hair - were out of place. He was afraid, and Drakken had put that there.

"What is it?" Hench screamed at Blondie. Hench never screamed. "_Where_ is it?"

Blondie stabbed a finger in the vague direction of outside. "The north wall, sir!" he panted.

Hench's eyebrows crunched. He had one of those almost-microscopic cell phones embedded in his ear, and he was yanking on its antennae until Drakken was sure he'd puncture his eardrum. It would have served him right, but Drakken wasn't sure he wanted to be around for that. "Well, then, go take care of it!"

Blondie's face whitened until it matched Hench's. There had probably never been a security alert since he'd been working here. "B-but, sir - "

With an I-can't-believe-you're-wasting-my-time sigh, Hench cupped his hand around the boy's shoulder and pushed him out the door, following behind just as Drakken had hoped he would. Drakken felt his eyes go down into sinister slits. Hench treated everyone like that. It was just one of the many, many reasons why Drakken would be glad to overthrow him.

Maybe he'd spare the kid, though.

At last, the hour of triumph was at hand! Drakken was careful to keep all the exclamation points corralled in his head, to not let any of them visibly seep out. He rose from his chair - _not _leaping from it and overturning it in his excitement - and strolled across the room at a brisk pace - _not _a skittish run.

Drakken squared his shoulders, careful to look as refined as possible. His old self's cringing posture would have marked him an intruder instantly. He paused by the desk and examined the after-dinner mints the current receptionist would hand out for a dollar apiece. At HenchCo, there was no such thing as a free lunch - or even a complementary mint.

And Drakken resented that. Resented everything.

He took a handful of the mints and stuffed them into his pocket. He didn't need them, or even particularly _want _them, but if he didn't finger some ill-gotten gain soon, he would go even madder.

Now was the tricky part. Drakken held his breath so tightly his sternum almost met his spine and slipped down one of Hench's dark, secret corridors - they were too spooky to be called anything but _corridors_. Bubble doors marked the walls, the floor, the ceiling, prepared to fling open and spew waves of fierce henchmen so unlike his own.

But Shego had snuck - sneaked - snucked - blasted grammar - in here lots of times before, and she'd been happy to share tips. Her eyes had danced, as though she couldn't begin to picture him pulling it off, but it had been fascinating learning all the same.

Drakken pressed his body down into a tiny squat between the bubbles and crawled his feet through the blackness, weaving them around every circle in the floor. He couldn't spare even an inch, and for the first time in forever, he was grateful for his miniature hands and feet.

He was fully aware that he probably wasn't giving off the effortless vibe that always sprung from his sidekick. Shego had always seemed to fit perfectly in the shadows, but Drakken - this was all new to him. He was just learning not to be afraid of them.

After what must have been five agonizing hours - or minutes - Drakken spotted Hench's office door, gleaming with a golden nameplate, at the end of the corridor. He'd made it! And the bubbles stopped a good five feet before the doorway, which gave Drakken time to collect himself and saunter toward it. Was it fear that was spiking his heart? Excitement? Something else entirely?

All of Drakken's nerves were alive and bristling but somehow restrained. His arms swung, sedately, at his sides, rather than flopping around all gawky the way they usually did. His legs ate the distance between himself and his destination, despite the tremble in his knees and the blood throbbing in every pulse point.

It was as if someone else had control of his limbs, kind of the way he'd felt that one time he'd accidentally gotten drunk. Instead of being clumsier than ever, though, these movements were polished and cold, deadly smooth.

Yeah, it was all about attitude. "'Tude," as the teens today called it. Drakken would know - he had teen magazines coming out of his ears.

(Last month he would have paused to add, "Not really. Ew.")

The doorway _was_ intimidating, clutching the door so tight Drakken was sure he would need a crowbar to pry them apart. He'd been to HenchCo dozens and dozens of times, but never this far in. Jack Hench never invited anyone into his office - certainly not people he'd once described as "that poor, brainless, penniless Dr. Drakken."

Drakken's face flushed with rage, and his hands thrust out in front of him. They didn't grope vainly at the air anymore, though. Instead, they found the knob and wrapped themselves tight around it, transferring all Drakken's anger into it. _Please be unlocked_, he begged the inanimate object, the only goofy thing he'd done all day. _Oh, please, please, please._

It was. Drakken could sense very little resistance behind the knob. Ha! Hench was so quick to fix his so-called security breach that he'd left the _real_ target wide open. Drakken remained silent, but he was cackling inside.

The door wasn't quite so quiet. It went _screee_ as it opened, and Drakken winced. If Shego were here, it wouldn't have made a sound, he knew. Shego was a good sneaker. He should tell her that sometime, only he'd have to think of a better way to say it, because that sounded like she was a shoe. . .

Dismissing the potential distractions, Drakken put first one foot and then the other into Hench's office, pulling the door closed behind him. And stopped. And gaped.

Hench's office was circled by windows on all sides, big sprawling panes that captured the light and brushed it perfectly over the leather furniture. The well-groomed carpet. The plasma TV.

Envy punched Drakken in the gut until he thought he'd retch. He was keenly aware of the scraggly state of his hair. And of the injustice of it all. If Kim Possible was so committed to law and order and justice and fairness, why wasn't this oozing blister of a man festering in jail? Selling weapons to supervillains - at prices that could qualify as extortion? Since when was that okay?

But wasn't that how it always was? Drakken felt his teeth grind down. Nobody who hurt him ever got into trouble. Hench, Possible, Chen, Ramesh. . . they were all still free men. Dementor had a few prison terms under his belt, but none for Excessive Jerkiness to Fellow Villains.

That was why he had to set things right himself. And eliminate Kim Possible. He'd show the world what it was like to have no one to save you.

Drakken paused to pant. Geez, it was hot in here. It wasn't even technically spring yet, but the room must have been at least a hundred degrees. He swiped a gloved hand across his sweaty forehead.

With determination throbbing in his very core, Drakken sank down into Hench's chair. Ohhh, it was so soft and velvety, cushioning his tailbone. A taste of the luxuries to come. All but licking his chops, Drakken jiggled Hench's computer mouse. The screen saver flickered off, revealing Hench's master control panel, which snippishly demanded a password.

Drakken was prepared for that, however. He was prepared for just about anything. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the Invincible Cracker-Hacker. Of his own invention, of course. He had to lay low on the outsourcing, or Kim Possible _would_ smell a rat.

No, make that a dragon. A ferocious blue dragon, breathing lethal fire at anyone who got in his way. The desire coursed in Drakken's veins, leaving him warm and cold and wicked.

And what was Kim Possible but a hoity-toity teenage girl? A "princess," as Shego always called her.

Everyone knew dragons ate princesses.

The Invincible Cracker-Hacker cracked-hacked the code in less than thirty seconds, and the screen came alive with HenchCo's weapons and many other assorted little morsels. They were all so gorgeous, so tempting, that they almost overwhelmed Drakken.

But almost didn't count, not even in horseshoes.

Drakken clicked the arrow into the search box with the stealth of a ninja. His fingers pecked just short of frantically at the keys. C-Y-B-E-R-T-R-O-N-I-C - he had to spell it correctly; couldn't jumble the letters this time - T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G-Y. He punched Enter, pretending it was Hench's face.

There! If all went right, then a page would load, telling him exactly what kind HenchCo had developed, what the going rate was, and which warehouse it was stored in. Knowing that last one automatically changed the price to "free."

_No results found._

Drakken had to catch himself in mid-lurch. That was the knee-jerk reaction of his old frustratedy self, not the cold calculation of his new one.

Though his insides roiled with desperation, Drakken forced himself to lean back in the chair and twiddle his fingers together in true pensive-genius fashion. To his own surprise, they moved in calm taps, not nervous twitches. It struck Drakken that he hadn't grunted his nonsense noises for going on a week now. The facts lined themselves up in his head like information in a textbook.

They hadn't gone mainstream yet. If HenchCo didn't offer an evil twin, it must have been so hush-hush they didn't even know about it.

And if that was true, he was looking in all the wrong places. HenchCo would sell you deadly tech, provide you with the manpower, but they didn't deal in secrets that could destroy the world. There was only one man who. . . ooh, Drakken had hoped it wouldn't come to this.

There was only one man who dealt in black-market government secrets as if they were Cuban cigars. Big Daddy Brotherson, the closest thing to a gangster Drakken had ever encountered. He used to hang out in an old run-down place that smelled like all kinds of lawlessness, but rumor had it he'd recently moved up in the world and was now in charge of a criminal nightclub called The Bermuda Triangle.

Ordinarily, Drakken would have loved to stand right under that name and prove it didn't scare him. Big Daddy and his cronies, though, had always given Drakken the willies. Instead of proudly proclaiming their evil, they worked to stay hidden in the shadows, which Drakken had always seen as very misleading, not to mention unnerving. Now he was beginning to see that they might have done it for good reason.

Then there was the issue of money. Everyone may have had a price, but Big Daddy's was higher than most. And he wanted cash - the green kind you could run through your fingers, so you couldn't bamboozle him with a check that may or may not have bounced.

That wasn't the biggest of Drakken's concerns, though. A craving for money was logical, understandable. Hench could be reasoned with, but Brotherson. . . He was more like the Riddler from those old Batman comics, impossible to decipher, always playing games with you. Drakken was brilliant, but his brain was just learning how to be tricky. Big Daddy - as far as Drakken could tell, he'd been _born_ an enigma.

Oh, and who was he kidding? The money _was_ a problem. Drakken was barely able to afford paying his henchmen and Shego, and he was so deep in debt on all twelve of his credit cards that he didn't bother to keep track of the red anymore. There certainly wasn't anything extra to bribe a nightclub owner with.

Drakken spun himself around in the chair, swatting at the perspiration returning to his spiky hairline. There was no room for despair or panic in his new 'tude. All he could think to do was keep spinning the chair, over and over, and over again. But that would be childish - another thing he was done being.

The Plan crept through, though, and tightened his spine. Drakken shoved back from the desk and skipped his eyes over every inch of Hench's office, so as not to miss a detail that could be life-saving.

That was when he saw one of the keyholed drawers protruding from Hench's desk, just a hair. Must have been closed in a hurry as Hench dashed out.

Hardly daring to breathe, Drakken hooked his fingertips around the drawer and pulled. It came open soundlessly, and its contents sizzled the fire in Drakken's middle.

Rows upon rows of Benjamin Franklins stared up at him. There must have been thousands, maybe even _millions_, of dollars in that drawer.

_So he wouldn't miss a couple hundred, now, would he?_

Drakken's lips parted in a snarling smile. In spite of the sweat dribbling down the bridge of his nose, he was cold inside again. Everything but the driving flame. He reached forward.

Call it guilt, call it his conscience, call it cowardice - whatever you called it, Drakken had an attack of it, just for an instant. He could only stand there, trembling hand at the ready over the stack of cash, and feel his ever-quickening heartbeat and something pulling tight across his chest.

Something like nausea. When he tried to stand up, a blanket of it draped over him. Stomach acid sizzled its way up his throat.

Drakken moaned and sank back down. The old familiar refrain of _Oh-no-I'm-going-to-throw-up-I-hate-throwing-up-I-hate-it-I-HATE-it!_ only toyed with him for a moment before the strong side resumed command. He was tough now. Hardy. Fearless. He could handle a little queasiness.

Still, Drakken waited until the contents of his belly had settled before rising again. One hand rubbing his stomach to calm it down, he filled the other with six bills each from the hundreds of stacks. Dropped them into his pocket.

And got the _heck_ out of there.

Hench was so busy yelling at that hapless blond kid that he never noticed Drakken's hasty departure. He probably hadn't even seen him in the waiting room, and Blondie was too wrung-out to remember any guests. Even the blue one, Drakken thought bitterly.

Who was brainless and penniless _now_, though? Drakken had a brain, and it was bleeding brilliance, calculating the value of the bills, stopping and jamming only when it got to ten thousand. Any more digits and it demanded concentration beyond the second-best he could give it while piloting.

He jumped in the hovercraft, fastened his seat belt, and turned his keys in the ignition. The motor rumbled, much as the bonfire in Drakken was doing even at this moment. His hand kept straying to his pocket on the flight home, to the money, all curled up and illicit around the mints. So _this_ was what being a villain felt like.

Drakken loved it.

Soon enough, he was sweeping the hovercraft into the secret underground landing strip of his Alpine lair. It was already night up in the mountains, so that Drakken could barely make out the spiffy sign that read "Secret Lair." He'd put in there in his stupid days, his exuberant days. Whether the henchmen were getting lost or not, it needed to come down soon.

Drakken stretched his back as he climbed from the hovercraft. What he had inside him now wasn't a lack of excitement. It was excitement under control, excitement that could tolerate waiting until the perfect moment.

Until it all came together - and everything else fell apart.

The scientific personnel he had recently hired stiffly said hello, and Drakken nodded at them just as curtly in return. The unfinished darkness was giving him a mean, spiteful feeling, and he wasn't sure their loyalty would stand up to scrutiny. No one's ever did.

Drakken plunged himself down yet another pitch-black hallway, this one his own, deep and full of power he had yet to harness. He still wasn't as used to the layout of _this _lair as his haunted-island one, and every step he took felt like the darkness was pressing in on him. It wasn't scary anymore, though. The darkness was where he belonged. An occasional stubbed toe wasn't fun, but it wasn't the end of the world, either.

Yes, he was finally thinking like an adult.

The only lit-up spot on the entire corridor - he was _really _starting to like that word - was the rather blinding passage the henchmen hung out in. Of course. _They_ were still afraid of the dark, and right now they were clustered together under the bulbs as if they were a herd of timid sheep.

They said, "Hi, Boss," and "How are ya?" and "Where ya goin'?" The things they always said.

Once upon a time, Drakken might have greeted them, asked how they were doing. Now he wasn't even sure he could recall individual names. They all blurred together, one big swarm of incompetence.

Synthdrones. He needed to get to his Synthodrones.

Drakken made it as far as the stairs he never used - underground lairs had so much more menace than above-ground ones - and pressed his lips into a scrawny line. His Plan was brilliant, and it was nearly killing him to keep it all bottled up inside. It fizzed in there, like bubbles in a soda can. How long could you shake it before it exploded?

_That's right. Chemistry._ Chemistry was good. Chemistry was calming.

And come to think of it, what he was wrestling with right now was just a chemical process. Titration. Take a substance you know (laser blasters, a genius plan, and a man with enough determination to scale Mt. Everest), add another you don't know (keeping mum about the plan, distributing his instruments of attack to every child in the civilized world, Cybertronic technology that would bend at his will) - and watch the reaction.

Boom.

Drakken's first impulse was to run to Shego for a high-five. But he suppressed it, burying the buffoon he used to be under layers of darkness, and ran his hand over the smooth, cool wood of the banister instead.

That may have been the hardest part: not telling Shego. Surely her eye-rolls and insolent remarks would instantly stop if she knew exactly what he had in store for mankind. But the first rule of The Plan was that he didn't talk about The Plan.

And, although Drakken never would have admitted it to her - she had enough trouble remembering her place as it was - Shego was the smartest person he knew. If _she _couldn't piece it together, nobody could.

Certainly not his redheaded nemesis. Kim Possible was like the sequel to Shego, a limp retread of all the things that had worked so well the first time around. Boring. Yawn. Even if one had to get beaten, couldn't at least not be by one of those modern reboots, all flash and no substance?

If only he could find her Achilles' heel! Drakken ground his hand into the bannister and scowled until pain speared his knuckles and his eyebrow touched his upper lids. With great restraint, he shook his head and entered the wide-walled, high-ceilinged, deep-floored room where his loyal soldiers awaited orders.

It was a mad scientist's paradise. Tools were scattered far and thin across the floor, and Drakken felt his thoughts spread out to match. What vulnerability had he ever seen Kim Possible show? She was young and athletic and spry. Saved everyone regardless of how evil they were. Definitely didn't sneak out of the house at night with a fake ID.

Drakken stopped himself from kicking a Synthodrone just in time. They were standing so precisely in their uniforms of deep burgundy, his second-favorite color, lined up so perfectly, the green glowing orbs that served as their eyes shimmering even in what little light there was. It would be a shame to dent one. Or knock it over and start a domino pile.

He paused and waited for the doubt to hiss that, dolt, he wasn't strong enough to do damage to anything save his foot. But it didn't come, and Drakken was left panting for an answer.

"Kim Possible!" he growled under his breath. His deep voice curved around the walls and ran back to him in echoes. "Apparently you missed the memo that the tables have turned! _I _am now the predator - and _you_, the prey!" He squeezed out a chuckle. "And even the smartest prey has a weakness."

There was a tiny whimper from behind Drakken, and for an illogical moment, he guessed it was Kim Possible herself, cowering in fear from the true villain he'd become. But it wasn't. When Drakken turned around, he was looking into a sweet face, puffy with pink, with such hope in its brown eyes.

Commodore Puddles. His attack poodle. Who was currently wagging his tail and prancing a little on his tiny front paws and looking not the slightest bit vicious.

The fluffy little dog was a liability, too. One Drakken didn't have time for. He heaved a great sigh as he reached for his wrench. "Not _now_, Commodore Puddles," he snapped. "Daddy's very busy - "

And then the words caught in his throat and strangled him. How many times had he heard their exact duplicates, right down to the anger wedged between syllables, in the first eight years of his life? He couldn't be like the only man he hated worse than Dementor.

So Drakken sank down to his backside, forming a lap that Commodore Puddles scampered into. Drakken scratched that special spot behind the puppy's ears and rubbed the belly that was the same texture as HenchCo's carpet. He was rewarded with a loving lick on the chin.

For a moment, Drakken teetered on the line between war and peace. When he held his poodle and closed his eyes, he could almost believe he could turn over a new leaf. Learn to be happy without the world. Be good.

But when Drakken opened his eyes and looked up, there was only the darkness, the blackness, pressing in on him. Reminding him that the world would never understand until its eyes were forced open. All of last year had proven that.

First, he'd been arrested in front of his _mother_. Though she continued to cling to the belief that Eddy was to blame, Drakken had been ashamed for her to see him, handcuffed like that and being loaded into the back of Middleton's all-too-familiar paddy wagon. He'd cried all the way to the station.

Then Shego had fallen in love with him. Flirted with him. Kissed him - the longest full-on lip-lock he'd ever experienced - from a smart mouth Drakken periodically wanted to tape shut. The panic had flared, that the only friend he had in all the galaxy had a crush on him, and now things would never be the same.

Turned out Shego had only been under the influence of a Moodulator, whose circuits wound up getting fried by him - back in those stupid, reckless days. It had locked her into a supposedly irreversible state of rage, and she'd directed all of it at him. She'd beaten him to a strip of beef jerky before Drakken had bribed her with Iceland and brought her back around.

And the Attitudinator stole his evil and gave it to the buffoon. Shego got annoyed with him - ditched him - quite literally threw him overboard. Then he had to be yanked away from the happiness and the mole rat and the cocoa moo, back into what the press called "megalomania." Drakken just knew it as raw hurt.

The absolutely _genius_ Silly Hat scheme had promised to be better. He even got to lock James Possible in a jail cell - how was that for irony? But the man had mocked him, digging into the wounds of the past to infect them, and Drakken never got the chance to destroy him. Had the whole family - and the buffoon - at his mercy at one point, but the giant robotic horse had taken away his keys. And his pants. And everyone had seen him in his decidedly un-manly boxer shorts. The only good thing about it was that Ann wasn't there. Kim Possible got all her pity from her mother's side.

The Villain House Party wasn't any better. Dementor had gotten him drunk, just for kicks, and Drakken had to retaliate by stealing the Pan-Dimensional Vortex Inducer. He'd planned to conquer the world with the very weapon Dementor had such a soft spot for, and it would be a delicious act of revenge. Yet somehow he'd gotten stranded on _Evil Eye for the Bad Guy_ - a show he used to _like_ - and the hosts dragged every aspect of his appearance through the mud. Cut his hair and dressed him in - in - in, well, Drakken wasn't quite sure what to call it, but he'd seen bikinis less revealing. Ew.

Even though it was all only on the television, even though Drakken had eventually spilled out into the real world with his ponytail and modest lab coat intact, it was another tick on the slate. Particularly when the Evil Eye Trio had tried to drum up publicity with those photos they'd snapped of him. Getting out of the shower. Strategically placed impediments only at what was absolutely required to be blocked.

He'd launched the Brainwashing Shampoo scheme - ugh, _not _one of his finest hours. And he'd gotten to be on TV again, which was fun this time, but it ended with his arrest. Back to the ugly depths of prison.

And Team Impossible had capped it all off by pounding Drakken to a pulp when he'd tried to escape. Actually, it had only taken one punch, which made the whole event even tougher on the ego. And Kim Possible had been standing there, watching with eyes like a school nurse. Pitying. Wanting to help.

Ouch.

The pain, the pain - everywhere he looked, there was pain. And hunger, that craving that cried, _Not enough! Not enough!_ and turned up its nose at every crumb he offered it. He felt bare and vulnerable, with what was left of his heart all laid out, and he couldn't stand it another second.

In that instant, Drakken settled back into his coldness. And it welcomed him in a way warmth never had.

Slowly, he eased his poodle to the ground. "Don't tell anyone, okay?" he choked. "I'm not supposed to be soft anymore."

Commodore Puddles gave him a cross-my-heart look and trotted off, license tags jingling merrily. Drakken punched his jaw onto the edge of his lab table and sighed again, long and low.

And then he stood up, bristled from head to toe, and went for the wrench again. He'd build a new Synthodrone. That he knew how to do, and you could never have too many Synthodrones.

As long as you were on the right side of them.

Drakken grinned wickedly and dove in. His tools wrenched and hammered and shaped and welded, his fingers flying free of his former clumsiness. It was an hour before anything in him squirmed, and even then it was only his bladder. That was easily remedied.

On the way back, Drakken stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. Was it an optical illusion formed by the mullet style, or was his hair receding on the sides? That widow's peak was growing more prominent by the day.

And his pupils seemed really big for some reason. Of course, his eyes were so dark, it had always been tough for Drakken to tell where the irises ended and the pupils began.

Drakken wet his hands - another phrase his immature self would have had a field day with - under the faucet and pressed their palms against his sockets. Heat and cold and everything in between fired up from way back in his skull. He was steady. He was strong.

There! He swiped his sleeve across the bridge of his nose and peered at himself again. The eyes that looked back at him were so saturated with evil, it ripped a chill from what remained of Drakken's wimpy side. His mouth was straight and firm. His cheeks drawn downward, losing their chubbiness in malice. He was a dragon.

And dragons ate princesses - unless knights in shining armor were around to save them. Drakken barely had the chance to make a face before his brain had pounced on the idea and devoured it.

_Let her _think _she's found a knight in shining armor. Let her _think _the guy of her dreams has shown up to sweep her off her feet. The few times Kim Possible's almost gone down, it's been because of boys. _

Drakken shivered in the chill. He could picture it all now - a hunk of a guy just happening to show up at Middleton High one day. The nicest, coolest kid one could imagine. Kim Possible's silly teenage hormones would overcome her and blind her to everything but his synthetic light.

Because he was going to be a Synthodrone. Under Drakken's control. And before Kim Possible met her end, Drakken would make certain she knew it.

He wasn't supposed to skip anymore, but there was a definite bounce to his step as he headed back to his Syntho-lab. The work in progress lay on the floor, and Drakken squatted down beside it, knees popping. For the first time, he began shaping a face instead of a horror mask. Yes, he was brilliant.

He was Dr. Drakken. And that didn't mean what it had two months ago.

"Synthodrone #901, I've got big plans for you," Drakken cooed as he carved a handsome nose into the Syntho-flesh. "But you're going to need a better name than that. . ."

**~Note: Some of the side effects of abusing ADHD predication include:**

***Increased heartbeat**

***Higher body temperature**

***Insomnia**

***Nausea **

***Loss of appetite**

***Dilated pupils**

***Bizarre, erratic, sometimes violent behavior.  
**

**All of which only adds to Drakken's evil intent and undermines his dubious sanity. ~**


	8. Last April

**~Now THIS was a fun chapter! I'm almost not sure if it's fair to claim authorship, because these characters play off each other so well they practically write themselves. **

**Mucho thanks to all readers and reviewers!~**

**Him**

Dr. Drakken had forgotten how wonderful it was to sleep in a bed.

Yes, siree, passing out on your lab table couldn't begin to compare to the experience of sliding between smooth-as-cream sheets. Snuggling up with the teddy bear you secretly loved. Letting the mattress relieve your long-suffering lumbar.

He was going to have to make this a regular occurrence, Drakken thought as he rubbed sleep-crust from his eyes and smacked some moisture back into his lips. At least a couple times a week. He could get to _like _this!

Except for the nightmares. Last night's hadn't been bad enough to thrash him awake, but it had involved handcuffs, enough exhibit-evidence to be labeled with the entire alphabet, and a judge who was all too happy to declare him guilty.

The sense that he was about to be hanged for his crimes against humanity was fleeting, though. There was something different in the air today. It was clean and crisp and fresh.

In spite of him.

Drakken had taken a grand total of six showers in the last two days, yet the icky stench of B.O. Spray still clung to him. The only advantage he had was that the Embarrassment Ninjas had sprayed Shego, too, so she couldn't accuse _him_ of smelling up the place, because she smelled just as bad. Unless she had covered it with some kind of perfume, which Drakken highly doubted. Shego wasn't the perfumey type. She didn't want to leave a scent any more than an escaping slave would.

Okay, so what _was _it about this day that made him so eager to start it? It was Sunday, but that hadn't meant anything for a long time. Drakken hadn't looked at a calender in weeks, not since his had fallen to the floor - he kept forgetting to put it back up. . .

Drakken rolled over to his other side and gave his arm a lanky heave. It landed on the radio - an ancient thing belonging to his child-self that he'd recently found in Mother's attic. It only got three stations, and you had to stretch the antenna halfway to New Zealand to hear anything clearly, but it was his and Drakken loved it with all his heart and soul and liver. (Your liver was an important organ.)

"Good morning, good morning!" his favorite A.M. DJ greeted him. Her grandmother voice blended perfectly with the static. "And we're looking at a beautiful day today - high of sixty-three, warm breeze from the south, some scattered showers later this evening."

That _did _sound nice. Normally Drakken enjoyed a good thunderstorm to add to his mad-scientist planning and pacing and cackling maniacally. Whatever it was about today, though, was making him wish for sunny skies. What in the world -

And then the DJ answered him. "This is Francine Franklin, wishing you a very happy Easter."

Easter! Drakken jolted upright in bed. The surge of expectant energy that flooded him guaranteed he would need no caffeine this morning. Of course! It was a holiday! Did they physically do something to the atmosphere, or could he just detect them with his brilliantly keen intuition?

Well, it didn't matter. What mattered was that he _had_ stuff for Easter!

Drakken sprang from bed and went for the Smarty Mart sack resting against the door. Tingling all over like he'd mixed Pop Rocks and soda, he held the sack open and peered inside. Yes, it was all there. Fourteen different types of candy, little plastic eggs they would tuck into perfectly, note pads shaped like bunnies (complete with carrot-pens, of course), and a giant HAPPY EASTER banner to spread across the kitchen entrance.

Ohhh, this was going to be so _fun_! Drakken did a little tap-dance, ending with hands flung gleefully skyward. The excitement was reaching can't-contain-it levels.

Drakken skipped over to the window and peeled back the blackout shade. Those were pretty hardcore, but "hardcore" and "Easter Sunday" were like oil and water, their densities too dissimilar to mix. The shade came off, plastering itself to the wall beside it, and Drakken was hit with a faceful of sunlight.

Agggh! Too bright! Blinding, even! Drakken dropped his gaze and studied the ocean instead. This morning, it was a sparkly, happy blue - like him - and appeared very calm, with not a wave in sigh - very _un_like him.

Drakken propped his hands against what he presumed were his hips - his torso was so long and narrow it was hard to tell - and stared out over the waters, pretending, for a moment, that they were his kingdom. That he ruled everything. That there was nothing left to worry about. Easter was about hope and new life – day like that, it was time to think about the wonderful _results _of world domination instead of the ugly things you had to do to _get _there.

The sand he could see at the base of the cliff looked damp and clumpy, as though it had rained last night. Drakken wistfully allowed himself to imagine sandcastles, though he was scientifically aware that the beach was much too narrow and rocky to build a decent one.

As always, Drakken couldn't help but wonder what Kim Possible was seeing outside _her _window. Did the sun shine specially for her, the world-saving cheerleader? The happy state of her life - nay, her very _existence _- grated on Drakken, like he was. . . made of cheese or something. He was too worked up to devise a better metaphor.

Right now, in storybook land, little girls in lacy white frocks - whatever those were - and little boys pressed into suits against their will were skipping merrily to a quaint little church for a quaint little service. Kim Possible was probably in her Sunday best, sitting primly in a pew, listening to them talk about the God who blessed her with a great life and who obviously couldn't care less about Drakken. Then they'd all go home and ferret out some Easter eggs, stuffed with bite-sized chocolates. . .

Drakken smiled wispily at the memories - of chocolate, not of suits - before carving deep scowl lines on either side of his nose. The henchmen had probably all gone home to visit their families, leaving him with no one to assist him in his latest evil plan. Okay, so it wasn't exactly evil - and not much of a plan, either. He just wanted to have a good old-fashioned Easter egg hunt, him and all of them and Shego, together.

It was no fun to fill and hide your own Easter eggs, even if your short-term memory was bad enough to forget where you'd put them in a few hours. Without someone to race to the best secret spots where an egg was sure to be tucked - without the need to launch yourself at a particularly large one and tackle it under your body like football players did sometimes - what was the point?

The resentment gnawed away at Drakken until he felt his blood pressure climbing. Then, just as suddenly, it leaked out of him, and he sagged against the window. His inner little boy was crying out to go home and gorge himself on Mother's honey-glazed ham and dip eggs into colored dye with spoons.

With that, however, would come the cooing. The cheek-pinching. The motherly questions that, like archeologists, dug away at his lies, never giving up until they unearthed some strand of truth.

No, none of that, Drakken decided. He just didn't want to be here. . . alone. . . today. He could feel his chin threatening to crumple.

Drakken's stomach growled for breakfast, distracting him from the loneliness. Still barefoot and jammie-clad, he padded down the hallway for the bathroom. Its ceiling reached up, up, up, into a perfect cube. Shorter than most of the other blocks of the lair, but still made to accommodate Drakken's minor claustrophobia.

Once inside, he swiped a soapy washcloth across his face and popped his contacts in. Ah, the world was in high-def again!

Drakken applied several clicks of deodorant to each underarm, fabricated a story about taking out a rabid skunk with his bare hands in case anyone inquired why he smelled bad, and headed out to begin his Easter.

He was so busy wondering what type of cereal he should have - he was thinking Trix, since they were as colorful as Easter eggs - that he didn't realize the hallway wasn't empty until he smacked straight into someone's broad back. That was a good clue.

Drakken screamed - morning gunk crackled his vocal cords, keeping him from sounding like a six-year-old girl. The henchmen turned their heads in unison to stare at him.

The henchmen were here.

Actually, they looked more like _hunch_men, all bent over these big ceramic-looking pots piled high with dirt. Resting on the floor next to them were tiny containers filled with. . . flowers. Flowers, big and pink and star-shaped, just like how children's storybook illustrations claimed flowers should look. Ordinarily, Drakken would never have permitted their prettiness in his presence, but it was Easter and he wasn't alone, and that was _almost _as good as ruling the planet.

"What. . . what are you doing here?" Drakken demanded gruffly. There was something thick in his throat, something that quivered in total joy where the sadness had been lodged only seconds before. "I thought you were going home to be with your families!"

The henchmen all exchanged glances, as if each one were expecting the other to be the mouthpiece. "This evening, Boss," Bill eventually spoke up. "We thought we'd spend the first half of the day here. With you."

_With him!_

Drakken did let a squawk escape that time, and he broke into a grin he could see without aid of a mirror. The henchmen's smiles all flickered on at once, clearly reading, _I don't understand him, but he's happy - right?_

So wanting to please him. Staying with him so he wouldn't be lonely. The inept little bunch of losers Drakken was often sorry he'd even hired - right now, he wanted to fling his arms around them.

He closed his eyes and let the warmth fill his chest. Easter peace. He could get to like _that_, too.

Waitaminute. _Flowers_?

Drakken's eyes flew back open and fastened on the cheery pink blossoms before him. "Uh - ugh - why are you planting flowers?" he stammered.

The henchmen shrugged, all out of sync with each other, which made them appear to be doing the wave. "I guess 'cause it seemed like a nice Easterly thing to do," Fred finally said.

Drakken forced oxygen into his lungs, which were squeezing on cue, and struggled to keep "softhearted, soft-headed fools" from ripping back out with it. He really did _try_ to be a kind boss, but it was hard when they were so - so - so not-evil!

Still, the henchmen were more fun-loving than Shego, who he _knew _wasn't coming in today. She hardly ever did on weekends. They would get pumped - that was what the teens today would say, _pumped _- for an egg hunt right along with him. Shego probably just would have rolled her eyes and treated him to a heaping dose of snark.

Drakken couldn't explain why he missed that.

He crunched his eyebrow down to 180 degrees. The rest of the businesslike expression followed. No, all Shego's absence meant was that no one would be around to question his authority. He had a plan forming in his mind - a full-fledged _plan_ - driving his heartbeat up several notches.

Nevertheless, Drakken locked his hands behind his back and leveled a stern-eyed stare at the henchmen. He was in charge here. "Well, I have a much more Easterly -" the word stretched his tongue pleasantly, and Drakken decided to say it more often, though he had no idea when he'd ever get the chance to - "assignment for you!"

"Assignment?" Marc repeated. He was barely holding back a just-been-kicked edge.

It burst inside Drakken, that he had the power to cause that. It was as nutritious as. . . he didn't know. . . fiber or something. "Yes!" Drakken's voice rose in volume, but its pitch stayed marvelously low and booming. He loved doing that. "Stay right here and await further instructions!"

With that, Drakken tore off for his room. He had never, ever been so thrilled to have a built-in evil family before!

Because even supervillains had a gulf inside them, and they needed somebody there to keep it from widening.

When Drakken returned with his sack and dumped the goodies onto the floor, the henchmen's mouths, about the only feature he could really see under those eerie hooded jumpsuits, went into _O_s of astonishment. Drakken's own smile drooled to return, but he had to keep up appearances.

"First," he barked, "we will hang this banner in the kitchen doorway! Then we will come back and fill these eggs with all this wonderful candy! And then -" Drakken drew out a long, dramatic pause - "we shall have an Easter egg hunt!"

The henchmen cheered as if he had just announced a. . . a. . . well, Drakken couldn't actually think of anything better than an Easter egg hunt. Drakken's own face gave up the fight and beamed. His "Now, get to it!" came out just this side of a chuckle. "I'll be back in a moment," he added.

Huge heads nodded, and the henchmen set cheerfully about their work, like they were the Seven Dwarfs. Except there were much more than seven of them and the dwarfiest person around here was him, the boss. Whatever. Drakken had more important matters to attend to. Like finding the baby of the family.

He located Commodore Puddles curled up on the living room couch, working away at a rawhide bone. His tail waggled as soon as he saw Drakken. Having a dog, Drakken had determined long ago, was very good for the self-esteem.

Drakken bent down and rubbed noses with the puppy. Commodore Puddles's was cold and wet and perfect. It made Drakken feel guilty about picking him up, depositing him in his puppy carrier, and latching the door.

Commodore Puddles began to whine immediately and shiver violently. To him, the carrier meant the vet. Drakken fetched the bone – ironic, for the _human _to do that – and stuck it inside the barred door, but even that didn't seem to help. Puddles lay down right on top of it and set up a mournful howl.

Drakken swallowed hard. He had dropped helpless teenagers to what were _supposed_ to be their deaths and barely been pricked by their screams, but this was resurrecting the mid-esophagus lump.

Something flashed in Drakken's brain then. Could have been inspiration. Could have been his notoriously unreliable ego. Whatever the case, Drakken went with it.

He scrambled back to the bathroom and washed all the nontoxic-but-still-yucky-tasting soap out of the washcloth he'd washed his face with that morning. Then, with good intentions throbbing at his temples, Drakken fed it through one of the carrier's air-holes.

Sure enough, Commodore Puddles nuzzled his snout straight down into it and sighed. His eyes closed, and his tail gave a few grateful wags. That was all he'd needed. It smelled like his daddy.

The depth of love wrapping Drakken was unfamiliar to him. It was a liability, too, Hench would have said, but Easter didn't count.

Drakken zipped back to his room. Changed into his lab coat, cool and comforting against his goose-bumped skin. Pulled on a pair of appropriately tropical-colored socks. Rode the floor back out to the main room in a stocking-feet slide.

When he'd halted successfully (as in _without doing a face plant_) in front of the henchmen, he clapped his hands with importance. "All right," Drakken boomed. "Let us get to work filling those eggs!"

Fred peered down the two-foot difference in height. "Us?" he asked.

"Yes, _us_." Drakken could see his own cheeks plumping in satisfaction, right into his line of vision. "You think I'm going to let you big lunks have all the fun?"

And so the fun began.

Filling the eggs was an enormous joy. The only hitch came when he had to scold Bill for sneaking a Reese's peanut-butter egg - Drakken's very favorite, unless you counted all the others! Bill had blinked behind the sunglasses, Drakken knew, and said, "But, boss, I just saw you eat two Snickers bars."

Drakken's temper barely got the chance to burn. He simply straightened his backbone (ahh, felt good) and sniffed, "Only the _boss_ gets to sample the treats!"

They'd agreed to that. They'd agree to just about anything. One of the reasons Drakken _hadn't _ever gotten around to firing them. But he heard Shego's voice in his head, reminding him that if he ate all the candy _now_ there wouldn't be enough for the hunt, and besides, he'd get a tummyache and not be able to enjoy the rest of the day. So he limited himself to popping a few miniature M&Ms here and there.

Once the eggs were filled, Drakken stood stiffly in front of the henchmen and read out loud from the list of Rules For Hiding Eggs he'd compiled. "Rule One: No hiding eggs in the lights. They _will _melt, and it's nearly impossible to get the smell of melted plastic out!" Almost as hard as B.O. spray. Man, he still stank.

"Rule Two: Each hiding place must be no more than seven feet, six inches off the ground, owing to your boss's five-foot-ten height and twenty-inch reach." Drakken shot them a scowl. They'd _better_ not forget that one. It had ruined so many Easters in the past.

"Rule Three: No hiding place shall require scooching, lifting, or otherwise moving a heavy object to retrieve the egg. Couch pillow, fine. Couch, no.

Rule Four: No hiding anything in, on, or near anything breakable. Remember what happened last year, Phil."

A smaller, paler henchman who still wasn't as pale and small as Drakken hunched his shoulders and looked rightfully ashamed. That vase had been an investment.

"Rule Five: No one may let Commodore Puddles out of his carrier! I know his whines are heartbreaking, but chocolate is fatal to dogs. I can't risk him finding and eating an egg. Rule Six: Everyone may barter for their desired candy only _after_ the hunt. And Rule Seven: No one gets more candy than me." Drakken rolled the list up into a tube and stuck it behind his ear. "Move out, troops!"

The henchmen saluted, which sizzled right down to Drakken's toes. "And mind the shark tanks!" he called after them. He couldn't afford to lose an employee. Especially one who had chosen to spend part of their Easter with him.

Each of them - Drakken, too - were assigned one room in which to hide the booty. After the hiding was complete, they swept the rooms one at a time, which admittedly gave the hiders an unfair advantage, but with one room for each of them, and memories being as bad as they were, it all balanced out. Well, _mostly _balanced.

Eggs turned up in the living room under couch pillows, inside cabinets, and behind Drakken's Thinking Chair. In the kitchen, they were mostly tucked in the pantry, which was rather clever of Phil, because they were nicely camouflaged among other food. Bathroom - one was tucked into the shower nozzle, one plunked inside the hamper, another floating in the (thankfully clean) toilet. Drakken decided to make _that_ a rule next year.

The henchmen's quarters and his bedroom were last on the list. (Shego's quarters were off limits - she _was_ a lady, after all.) Drakken had assigned himself to Henchman Bedroom R-Z, where he'd made sure to (snicker) stash some eggs in locations even his slenderer henchmen couldn't fit. Those were all his. It was just part of his ruthless depravity as a future tyrant.

Slenderer. If that was a word, it shouldn't have been. Made you sound like a stuttering nincompoop to say it.

Drakken's bedroom was the definition of disorder, he had to admit, but it was a mess he knew best, so he managed to find several eggs. (Including one buried under a heap of underwear. How embarrassing.) He made full use of his smaller size, stretching his arms into cramped corners, strolling right under the massive TV screen while the henchmen were still working out how to fold themselves down, sliding easily beneath the bed and only clonking his noggin once.

At one point, Drakken and Noah, a henchman who was tanned brown even in April, dove for an egg resting on the heating vent. Both their hands came down on opposite sides at the exact same time. Somehow, Drakken mustered enough strength to wrench it out of Noah's grip and popped it open to reveal a treasure trove of shiny Starburst jellybeans. The sight was so beautiful, it almost made him cry.

Beside him, Noah was doing a little sniffling of his own. "We tied for that, though, boss," he whined.

Drakken rolled his eyes. "Oh, stop your blubbering!" he snapped. And then it was as if some other Drakken had taken control of his mouth, a Drakken who had grown soft in his middle age, and made him say, "We can share."

Noah looked as startled as if his boss had just whipped off a toupee and revealed himself to be bald. The henchmen knew as well as he did how much Drakken hated to share. Where was _that_ coming from?

Oooh, the element of surprise was an asset! Nobody had ever been able to predict Shego, and look how good at bad she was.

Before he could change his mind, Drakken held out the egg to Noah and asked, "What flavor do you like best?" With his fingers crossed that the guy wouldn't say grape, because that was _his_ top pick, too.

Noah took an aggravating ten seconds to answer. "Green apple," he finally said.

"Perfect!" Drakken felt everything on his body rocket upward. His eyes wouldn't hold their slits, and he could barely growl out the order for Noah to take the green ones and leave the rest for him.

Noah agreeably obeyed. Drakken dropped the egg into his basket with a loud CLINK! and no small amount of victory. Score one for stern-but-benevolent.

Once all the eggs had been located - and Drakken could tell, because he'd planted a tracking chip in each egg as they were being filled - the trading began. Henchmen swapped M&Ms for Skittles - they were healthier, since they were fruit-flavored - and Snickers for Hershey's - not everyone liked nuts - and Kit-Kats for Reese's - okay, he didn't see any reason for that.

Drakken himself just observed the whole procedure, munching happily through his loot. He hadn't bought any candy that he didn't like, of course. Actually, when it came to candy, there was very little Drakken _didn't _like.

When at last he could hold no more, Drakken sprawled out on his bed, tummy-down, and studied this wonderfully noisy, close, friendly family of his. It was nice to do something with them that they couldn't possibly fail at.

Drakken unearthed an old elephant joke book from the bookshelf stocked with science manuals and read them out loud until his sides hurt from giggling so hard. The henchmen's rumbling, dopey laughter went a long way toward closing the gulf.

It ripped wide open again, though, when the henchmen announced they had to leave if they were going to make it home before dark. He didn't know where home was for them. Far, far away, that was all. Far away from him.

Drakken managed not to slump to the floor, and through tight teeth, he bid them farewell and Happy Easter and all the other things he was supposed to bid them. As soon as they were gone, Drakken locked himself in his lab and peeled listlessly at the blackout sheet over the window. It was raining now. Figured.

He wondered where Shego was right now. Definitely not in church. Was she with _her _family? Her biological one, that is? She had those four brothers - did she ever visit them? Despite the fact that those brothers were law-abiding goody-two-shoes heroes, Drakken was struck with a pang for them. They must really miss Shego, with her no-nonsense way of making everything all right even when it seemed that nothing could ever be all right again.

A lump that could have been a tumor pressed against Drakken's Adam's apple. What he needed was an evil plot. Something to occupy his intellect, not his emotions.

Hey, it worked for Mr. Spock, didn't it?

Drakken plopped himself into his desk chair and hunched over the splintering wood, ignoring his back's screaming protests. Everything hurt all of a sudden, and he couldn't focus on a plan. His mind kept spinning across topics ranging from what time he could expect to see a rainbow to how ingenious his last plan had been. Like the others, it had been success-impaired, but, gee whiz, what a scheme!

Disintegrating Kim Possible one molecule at a time? As Shego would have said, "HECK, yeah!"

And Drakken had followed her around to witness his triumph. Slowly, slowly, parts of her that had been the bane of him were gone. The belly button that his nemesis needlessly exposed, the legs that had kicked him in the gut, the fingers that had been thrust accusingly at him - all vanished in understated little slurps that had Drakken bouncing in his seat.

Finally, all that was left to go was her head - the conniving little brain, the mouth almost as smart as Shego's, the eyes that never held respect, not ever. But the buffoon and the computer geek and the naked mole rat (and Drakken realized just now what a weird team that was) had found the antidote. Gone to SOUTH AMERICA to get it! How? They didn't have hovercrafts. Weren't old enough to fly them, anyway. It simply wasn't fair!

Drakken smacked at a pencil and sent it flying across the room. Then he concentrated, eyes shut tight, on Kim Possible's head winking right out of existence. Never to foil him or mock him or beat him up again.

That was hope, too, but it seemed like the exact opposite of Eastery. He didn't feel settled inside, but it could have been that tenth marshmallow-filled chocolate bunny.

Drakken crossed and recrossed his legs as though he had to use the restroom. His body was getting that tingle to it, the one that demanded energy release. So he paced the length of the room, and when that wasn't enough, let himself out and raced up and down the enormous hallway. His legs swished in his lab coat, churning and skittering as he sweated the loneliness away. Loneliness was heavy and dragging like the rain, and so horribly, horribly unvillainous.

Only after exhausting himself did Drakken haul himself back to the lab and collapse on the desk and pant as his heart switched its major blood delivery from his muscles to his kidneys. He swiped at a bead of perspiration on his nose and tapped his fingertips together. It would be okay, he told himself. Over and over.

And it would. Drakken pulled a piece of paper from the drawer and did some geometry proofs to steady himself. Angles and circles and polygons spoke to his genius, reassuring him that some things would never change, and he welcomed them.

So it went until six in the evening. That was the point where Drakken's conscience - curse that thing - stirred from its slumber and pricked him with, _You should call Mother._

Gulp. Lies were in his near future if he did. Shego said he was a lousy liar, especially for a supervillain, and Drakken lived in constant terror that one day he would blurt out something incriminating. Something even his mother couldn't miss. Not to mention the eardrum damage from all that squealing. . .

But if he _didn't _call her, on this special Easter day, he would get the talking-to of his life next time they spoke. A stitch in time saved gift horses from their mouths.

Or something.

With a long, world-weary sigh, Drakken rose from his desk and massaged the back of his neck. It was lumpy, all the tendons pulled tense, dreading the conversation to come.

The only thing scarier at this moment was staying in the solitary darkness all night without a plan.

All right then. Mother it was.

Funny how cold and dark the lair seemed when it was empty. It was _always _cold and dark, of course - a mad genius wouldn't settle for anything less - but the intimidation wave didn't crash over Drakken until he was helplessly alone. He could ride the crest like a champion boogie-boarder as long as he was surrounded by the people he loved.

Ew. He did _not_ love the henchmen. They were a useless batch of fools -

Still, Drakken had to admit he'd done more than just tolerate them today. The sudden lack of their noisy racket bothered him. And it bothered him that it bothered him. Drakken resolved to concentrate on how silly the words _boogie boarder_ sounded, instead.

He cradled the square gray phone against his chest, and poked out his mother's number, one of the only ones he'd ever been able to memorize. She answered on the first ring.

"Hello?" His mother's shrill voice sounded exactly as Drakken remembered it, simultaneously striking fear into him and soothing it away.

"Hello, Mother. This is Dr-Dra-Dr-Dra-Dr-Drew!" he stammered. Simply using the name was akin to degrading himself.

"_Drew_bie!" Mother hit an octave barely within human hearing range. "You remembered today was Easter! You called!"

"Of course I did," Drakken purred, careful to corral the exclamation points to a minimum. It was like experimenting with compounds in the lab - one gram too much of a substance, and the whole thing could explode. "I would have called earlier, but I was. . . errr. . . busy. . . with my radio talk show!"

The untruth staggered its way off Drakken's tongue. There were very few things he missed about being Drew Lipsky, but being able to be honest with her was one of them.

Of course, Drakken reminded himself quickly, he'd kept things from her even back then so she wouldn't worry. This was no different. If Mother knew what a high-risk profession he was in, her hair would have all turned white in an instant, even through the dye.

"On Easter?" Mother's disapproval rang through loud and clear.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. Drakken gritted his teeth against it. If he let it in, it would only seep into other areas of his life, such as his plans for Kim Possible's untimely demise and designing the hideous dungeon where Professor Dementor would live once Drakken was ruler of the world. Someday, he would have to eradicate that stupid conscience entirely.

"I always have to be on call." Drakken eased his backside onto the side of his desk. "In case there's an emergency. And there was this lady who was afraid of Easter egg hunts because every year she ever went on one as a kid, she got stung by a bee. Not the same bee - because bees die after they sting you - well, most kinds do - "

Rambling. One of the signs of a liar was that they rambled too much. Or was it that they didn't ramble enough?

Mother's little gasp didn't hold suspicion, though. "And what did you tell her?"

Hoo-boy. Why did she always have to put him on the spot like that? Shego would have had an answer, but he was very much not Shego.

"I. . . told her it was rooted in deep-seated insecurity of her place in the universe. Advised her to write 'I am more than bee fodder' on her wrists every morning until she believed it." Drakken licked his lips, which were going dryer by the second. "And to hold her Easter egg hunts indoors."

"_Ohhh_, you're so smart, Drewbie!" Mother gushed. "And so kind to take time on your holiday to help her solve her problems!"

Drakken allowed himself a moment to soak in it. At least _she _believed in him.

Except it was a fake him she believed in. She had no idea what he was truly up to, and she wouldn't until he succeeded. Drakken swept the naggings away with the visual of representatives of every nation of Earth bowing before him. And as he ushered Mother into his jewel-encrusted palace, into her luxurious room that held all of her sweet little heart's desires. . . she would be so proud of him. So proud.

And, somewhere out there, a man with the sharp Lipsky cheekbones would realize what he'd walked away from.

No. Bad thought. It hurt. Drakken turned his hate on a safe foe, Kim Possible. _Her _parents would have been crazy not to believe in _her_. Head cheerleader, straight-A student, _and _world-saving heroine? They must have been the proudest parents since the Einsteins.

And then there was her friendship with the school outsider, her self-righteous rules of protecting the innocent. Why couldn't she have been born three decades earlier and kept _him _safe from his tormentors?

Yes, he was bitter.

"So, how are you?" Mother asked.

Drakken groped for something true. "I had a good day," he replied cautiously.

"What about _night_? I know you've always had your insomnia. . ."

The woman knew him so well, it startled Drakken from his perch on the desk. "Oh, no, nothing to worry about there!" he said quickly. "I slept MUCH better than usual last night." Not a fib. Not quite. In a bed _was_ much better than usual.

"Good," Mother said. "You scare your poor old mother, trying to burn the candle at every end. It's not healthy."

"Yes, Mother. Of course, Mother. I'll be careful about that, Mother." Drakken wrinkled his nose. It was probably just the lingering remains of B.O. spray, but it was as if he could smell his own dishonesty.

"Will you be coming down to see me soon?" Mother's voice caught on an edge of longing.

It panged inside Drakken. "I'll have to check my calender," he said, and pretended to do just that. The rows of squares were actually blank - aside from medical appointments, plans for evil schemes were about the only things he ever marked on there, and he didn't have any of those in the works right now. "I'll probably be free some time next week," Drakken ventured.

It was just a matter of finding a time when he could slip away without Shego noticing. If Shego ever met his mother, her disrespect would set like cement.

Mother shrieked with joy. She followed it up with the usual queries about whether he was eating his vegetables and getting plenty of sunshine, which Drakken answered "yes" to so automatically he couldn't even tell if they were lies or not. Her concern was at once a comfort and a nuisance, and when the call finally ended, Drakken felt equal parts saddened and relieved.

There was something important. Something he was forgetting -

"Oh, snap, Commodore Puddles!" Drakken burst out and bolted for the living room.

Sure enough, Commodore Puddles had lived up to the latter half of his name. Poor puppy, how long had that been there? The carrier wasn't very big, so there was no getting away from it. . .

Yick. Didn't that qualify as animal abuse? Drakken sincerely hoped not. He may not have loved his henchmen, but he _did _love this little pink fluffball.

"Oh, Commodore Puddles!" Drakken cried as he undid the latch and opened the door to release his unintentional prisoner. "I forgot all about you! I'm a hideous, degenerate human being!" All the nags took their toll, and Drakken flung himself face-down on the frigid floor, fingers clawing at his eyebrow.

The next thing Drakken felt was a warm, moist tongue across his nose, bringing with it the scent of dog biscuits. When he raised his wet eyes, Commodore Puddles began to tenderly mop his cheek. He was just happy to be with Drakken once more.

Drakken gave his puppy a knuckle-noogie. "Thanks, pal," he muttered.

Now he just had to clean up the mess. Ugh. By himself. There was no one around to delegate to save for Commodore Puddles himself, and Drakken couldn't very well order him to clean up his own pee! He didn't even have opposable thumbs. . .

The next ten minutes were a yucky blur of paper towels soaking and the odor of ammonia getting fainter. Drakken had to periodically pull his head out of the crate and make a face to keep from gagging. That was especially important, because then he would have had to clean _that_ up, too.

And as Drakken scrubbed, he thought. Stewed over his arch-nemesis, who could save the world but not legally buy cigarettes. He didn't know why he was so surprised by her prowess. The daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon. It was as though they were breeding a new race of superhumans, like the X-Men.

But mutant superhumans were supposed to have some sort of obvious genetic abnormality, like gills on their necks or see-through skulls or something. Kim Possible looked as normal as you pleased. It was Drakken who had the creepy-blue skin and the lashing scar. He, who boasted no powers of his own save for a superior intellectual ability. It was such an injustice, it made Drakken want to cry, which made him want to scream, which made him want to annihilate the world.

He looked down and saw that his strokes, which had grown hard and angry, had completely wiped up the puddle. The paint would be coming off next.

Drakken tossed the scrubber aside and flexed the muscles in his fingers. They cramped more easily these days, like everything else on his body. It was almost scary - he wasn't ready to be old yet!

After his hands were washed, Drakken found himself lifting a blackout sheet for the third time today. The world beyond it was such a rainy mess. The economy was faltering, men like Jack Hench thrived while kids got bullied in their own schools and teachers looked the other way, and you couldn't take lotion on airplanes. A good ruler could fix all of that. Drakken folded his arms on the ledge and sighed, steaming a smidgen of the glass.

That was when he realized that even though it was raining and cloudy, it wasn't pitch-black. The sun still lurked behind the grayness of the sky, creating enough light to see where the cliffs rose and fell. Enough light to shimmer on the mouth-watering puddles, nothing like the gross one he'd just cleaned up.

Drakken leaned closer, closer, nose pressed to the window. When was the last time he had -

Long ago. Too long. He would have to fix that, too.

Drakken dug through the closet until he located his giant yellow rain slicker and snuggled into it. His soft-soled boots were exchanged for the black rubber ones he could see himself in. And then he was out the door, splashing merrily in puddle after puddle after puddle. Commodore Puddles bounded behind him, the water rolling right off his curly coat.

It was warmer outside than Drakken had expected, and the breeze blew soft salt spray up from the ocean to join the rain in hitting his face. Drops beat on his head in a steady pattern. _Ru-ler. Ru-ler_, it said. _You will be ru-ler of the wor-ld!_

And even though he hadn't conquered anything just yet, it was good to be alive. He wasn't even in danger of catching cold, since colds had nothing to do with the weather. They were caused by viruses. Even if they weren't, though, it would have been worth it.

Drakken stomped in an especially juicy puddle and bellowed for joy as it splashed up into his face. Kim Possible would never know this feeling - she was too busy being superhuman to experience the simple things in life! Perfect people didn't play in the rain.

So there were some perks to not having attained perfection yet.

Only when it started to get dark did Drakken head inside. Once there, he rubbed his hair dry with a towel - fun with static - and peeled off his wet clothes. He glanced around the bedroom for dry ones, but his laundry piles had been upset in the egg hunt, and he wasn't sure what was dirty or not anymore. Shrugging, he selected his pajamas and slid into their silken folds.

Ahhh, _bliss_! Prying his contacts out of his eyes had never felt better. He owed it to Mother to at least try to sleep tonight.

_No more nightmares, please?_ Drakken pleaded as he flipped off the light switch and curled over himself in bed. It was almost like a prayer. Maybe.

There was some special prayer Mother always used to say on Easter night, as she was tucking him in safe and sound. She would lean forward, press her soft hand to his forehead - must have been long ago, because Drakken didn't even remember the frayed nerves that usually accompanied touch - and murmur something as his eyes drooped lower and lower.

He longed for that precious time again. Drakken wasn't sure whether he believed in any of that stuff anymore, but some particle of him wished he could recall the prayer. He squeezed his fists around his sheets and breathed out deep, trying to force relaxation.

_Lord we thank thee _(you said "thee" instead of "you" in prayers)

_For - _

- what? The day? The night? The food? The rain he had frolicked in? Henchmen who cared?

A sliver of security, whether from his mother or something above, embedded itself in Drakken's chest. He closed his eyes and smiled sleepily. And then he was asleep, and Easter was over.

**Her**

The juniors and seniors capped off their year with a dreamy, professionally-catered prom. Sophomore year's climax? A science fair.

Kim Possible grunted to herself as she set down her end of the school-issue-plastic table she and Monique were carrying. Not that she minded the science fair itself. Some of the exhibits were really pretty neat, way cooler than the tornadoes in bottles they'd all made back in fifth grade.

It was getting saddled with Ron every year that brought Kim very close to ripping out chunks of her hair. Much as she loved Ron, he turned into Slacker of the Century whenever science projects rolled around. Kim suspected he was afraid that he couldn't have done the work even if he'd tried, but he acted like he just couldn't be bothered, and he played it so convincingly obnoxious even his best friend wanted to throttle him.

This year, though, the Boy Who Wouldn't Do Anything had been swapped for the Girl Who Had To Do Everything. Justine Flanner had an IQ higher than the temperature in Death Valley, and she used words that made Kim feel downright stupid next to her. _Not_ something Kim appreciated. She might not have been a child genius like the Tweebs, but she had a solid B-plus average in science, and she'd earned every point of it.

At least Justine wasn't here yet. That way, Kim might actually get a few words in edgewise to explain their project. Justine _had_ been more human lately, but you didn't recover from a major case of snob-dom overnight.

It wasn't that Kim considered herself smarter than everyone else. Still, it had been a long time since she'd run across another student who was obviously smarter than _her_, and she didn't like the prickles poking up her spine.

Ew. What this how it felt to be Drakken?

Kim shuddered as she hoisted their inter-dimensional-portal-in-a-box onto the table. Justine had had the thing "quantum-locked" - seriously, those kinds of words were just IN her vocabulary - which Kim had had to have Wade explain to her. Any other ten-year-old, and it would have been humiliating. Basically, you couldn't open the portal and release its contents without brainpower that rivaled Justine's and some super high tech.

Even so, Kim was careful as she rested it next to the baking-soda volcano built by her best friends. Monique had the misfortune of being Ron's partner this year, and he'd pulled the same junk with her. If Kim hadn't been so busy stopping Drakken and DNAmy's freaky dinosaur thing _and _attempting to convince Justine that she had a brain cell to call her own, she would've taken the time to chew the boy up one side and down the other. She knew Ron wasn't real big on student ethics - but this was a totally different sitch than printing a term paper off the Internet. After all, then he was only hurting himself, and besides, Mr. Barkin was smart enough to recognize a copy-and-paste job when he saw it. He knew Ron couldn't even _spell_ "autoimmune system," much less _define_ it.

Making life miserable for her other best friend, though - no. That Kim would _not_ stand for.

Monique took several steps back from the table and held up her hands like a camera lens. "It's not exactly high class," she said, jerking her ponytail at the volcano. "But it'll do."

Kim smiled as she hooked her arm through Monique's. "So Potential Boy finally came through, huh?"

"Eventually. It was like his brain woke up from a coma, and then he was all ready to help." Monique cocked a mischievous eyebrow. "Sometimes men just need a little push."

Monique didn't sound bitter - it _was_ tough to stay mad at Ron - and Kim let out a sigh of relief. There were few things less appealing for a teen girl than the thought of your two best friends at war. Give her a madman with a demolition weapon any day.

"So where _is _Ron?" Kim asked.

Monique shrugged. "Don't know. I haven't seen him since we met up at my locker this morning." She cupped a hand around her mouth and tipped toward Kim. "I think he's kinda embarrassed."

Kim cringed inwardly. Ron didn't get embarrassed often, but when he did - it was completely pitiful. Poor kid.

"And Justine is _where_ again?"

"Giving a speech at the Upperton Green Club on her theory for sealing the hole in the ozone layer," Kim said.

Monique dimpled. "Just a _bit _of a change from Ron, huh?"

"Little tiny," Kim replied over the clangs and clatters only a bunch of high schoolers could make gathered in the gym. Several of the boys she recognized from detention were working to climb right up the basketball goal since Lieutenant Barkin wasn't there to force them to be mature. Kim refrained from rolling her eyes only because, across the room, Bonnie was rolling _hers_ - and demanding Brick with her fingers to place their experiment just so. Kim couldn't tell _what_ it was supposed to be. Knowing Bonnie, probably something like, "How Science Proves I Am Cooler Than Everyone Else."

"Shush!" some boy suddenly hollered from the bleachers. "The judges are comin'!"

Sure enough, the sound of footsteps echoed from the hallway. Kim stiffened to crime-fighter-attention beside her portable wormhole. Once the judges saw that, she would have had plenty of, as Dad always said, "'splainin' to do." She actually wished for Justine's presence.

Monique flew to the door and framed its windows with her hands. Squinting one eye, she peeked through.

And then that eye popped wide open, her forehead wrinkled into rows, and she took a step back, long dangly earrings swaying nervously against her neck. Kim was instantly on alert. Not many things made Monique recoil like that.

Or put that wobble in her voice as she hissed, "Kim? Are the judges supposed to look like science projects themselves? This dude in front - "

"What dude?" Kim hissed back. Her body went into an automatic, fierce crouch.

Monique looked like she would sooner retake Algebra I than take another look outside, but she peered out the window again. "Huge chin," she reported. "Having a _very_ bad hair day. And - is his skin _blue_?"

Kim felt a rare clench of panic around her. _No, not here. Not _now_._

"And let me guess - right behind him is a girl with a green-and-black jumpsuit and more hair than you've ever seen?" Kim said.

Monique nodded as she slid down the length of the doorway. Even her fingers curled into a fist to stay out of sight.

Kim's mind flashed back to the wanted posters hanging in her locker, and she wondered if Monique had ever looked at them closely enough to match them to the people she was seeing now. Of course, the posters _were _in black-and-white, and Drakken's and Shego's most identifying traits were their skin colors.

And last time she'd seen them, there had been three of them. "And maybe also a chubby little woman with a bowl haircut?" Kim asked.

Monique shook her head. "No. It's just the two of them."

Oh, good. DNAmy wasn't here. Like that would _really _diminish the threat level.

It was different, battling supervillains on her own turf. Wisconsin or Canada or the Netherlands, she could dodge every one of Shego's moves without so much as breaking a sweat. She was in total control, especially when the villain least expected it. But in Middleton, in the buildings she'd grown up in, among the people she'd known since she was a kid. . .

It changed something in her, the strong, driving rhythm in her heart - _I can't let anyone get hurt, I can't let anyone get hurt_ - turning to a desperate beat - _Ican'tletanyonegethurt, Ican'tletanyonegethurt_. It didn't affect her performance - if anything, she fought even better, but Kim couldn't enjoy that kind of adrenaline rush.

"I take it these are supervillains?" Monique's whisper squeaked, despite her obvious effort to remain calm.

"Arch-foes," Kim confirmed. Her muscles locked down in preparation.

"What are they doing _here_?" Monique said frantically.

Kim's eyes skipped over the projects ranging from first-rate lame to grad-school brilliant. "They must want something. One of these things got their attention somehow, and they're here to take it from someone."

_Yeah, like maybe someone who's actually WON a science fair,_ Kim could imagine herself saying.

But then she pictured Drakken's face seizing up. His eyes got that bunchy-skinned thing going on, and the arrogance leaking from his posture seemed like a hollow victory whenever they did that. Kim wound up having to erase the entire image.

_Darn you, Drakken._

With that familiar, propelling thought, Kim threw herself into action. She grabbed an almost-empty round table from right under Bonnie's and Brick's noses and wedged it hard against the doors as Monique slid away to make room. "Help me barricade the doors!" Kim whisper-cried across the gym.

Most of the students whipped around in annoyance. Once they traced the call back to Kim, though, their faces startled. Her missions were infamous among the kids at Middleton High, and they knew if she said trouble, there was trouble.

Kim herself was eying the bleachers and wondering if they could detach from the walls when there was a sonic blast from the doorway. It shook the entire room, maybe the whole building, and Kim's very heart froze.

Monique crawled, coughing, out of the smoke. As it cleared away, it revealed that the double doors had been reduced to ragged strands on either side of the doorway. And, just as Kim had suspected, Drakken stood in the midst of the rubble, grinning smugly, twirling a laser between his tiny fingers.

That was when Kim's concern morphed into blood-pumping, useful anger. He'd damaged her _school_. Who did the little egomaniac think he was?

Kim did several cheerleading kick-flips, pushing off the floor and spiraling to land at Drakken's feet. "Whatever you think is happening - it's _so _not," she greeted him.

"Kim Possible!" Drakken's voice was as crusty and just-woken as the gunk Kim could see in the corners of his eyes. Bleh - WAY too close for comfort. "I should have known!"

"Uh, yeah, you should have." Kim folded her arms across her chest, anticipation for the fight running through her in smooth currents. "This is only where I go to school."

And these were her friends. Her classmates. And he was pointing a laser at them. How about NO? Kim sprang toward Drakken, but Shego leaped in front of him and struck a kung-fu pose without disrupting so much as a strand of her huge glossy mane.

All right. So physical confrontation was out. But Kim could always tie his tongue in knots. Shego generally found that amusing enough not to put a stop to it.

"So, um, why did you track me all the way back to my school?" Kim asked. She tilted her head and faked bewilderment. "I mean, that's not your usual M.O."

Drakken narrowed his heavy-lidded eyes, even more bloodshot than usual today. His nose, too, was swollen and red, matching the raw spots on his cheeks. Telltale signs of a crying jag, probably from his latest scheme being foiled last night.

"This actually has nothing -" he stopped, squinched up his face, and then began again - "_very little_ to do with you, Kim Possible." He snorted through the puffy-pink nose. "Do you really think I'd come all this way and blow up a gym just to obtain one meager little high teenage girl?"

How was that even a _question_? "Ye-ah," Kim replied as petulantly as possible. Few things bugged Drakken as much as the sassy-teenager routine. "You're totally obsessed with me. It's kind of scary."

A startled squawk flew from Drakken's lips. Jaw working as if he were chewing tobacco, he started sputtering his nonsense noises. "You - just - ngggh - aahh!"

Kim turned to slip a smile to Monique, but Shego was there instead. The girl's narrow green eyes gave her a he's-pathetic-isn't-he look.

Finally, Drakken fumbled his hands into fists and yanked himself into a straight line. "As if you could even begin to understand why I'm here, Kim P -" He cut himself off, like he'd just realized he'd already said her full name twice in the last minute. Instead, he spit "What do YOU know about science?", along with several bubbles of actual spit.

Kim's patience reached a breaking point. The contempt Drakken was shooting at her matched Justine's earlier behavior so exactly, she was beyond tweaked. "Lots!" she snapped back. "Just because I'm a cheerleader doesn't make me a ditz!"

Drakken broke into a grin, and Kim could have kicked herself for showing him he'd struck a nerve. There'd be absolutely no living with him now.

"I just thought your pathetic little high school showcase would be happy." Drakken's voice was dipping down into its rumble. "Now that you have a true scientific _genius _in the building!"

Blah, blah, blah. Kim had heard it all before. As long as Drakken wasn't threatening anyone at laser point, this could get boring fast. "Well, no, Justine hasn't gotten here yet," she said, utterly matter-of-fact.

Drakken curled his wrists onto his nearly nonexistent hips. But his quick movements couldn't hide the sting on his face. That should keep him down for at least another few minutes.

"Who's Justine?" Shego asked in the usual I couldn't-care-less-except-that-it-bugs-you tone. She gave her half-cat, half-reptile smirk.

"My science fair partner." Kim would have thrown in another zinger, but she wasn't trusting Drakken's impulse control at the moment. His eyes had a glitter that left sanity in the dust.

And if he laid a finger on Monique, on Brick, on Vinnie-from-detention - or even on _Bonnie _- Kim wasn't sure she'd be able to control herself.

Sure enough, Drakken jabbed a twiggy finger right at Kim's face. "Shego! Get her!" he bellowed.

That was one order Shego didn't mind obeying, and she launched herself at Kim like a missile. Kim sprang forward, legs already spinning in the sweep she'd perfected back in middle school.

"So," Kim said, "speaking of partners, what happened to DNAmy?" She vaulted over Shego's head and landed, once again, in defensive position.

Drakken's Adam's apple jerked sharply down. If Shego was a cat, Drakken was a dog - a neurotic little terrier boasting a spiked collar and a food dish that read "Killer." "That is utterly none of your business, Kim Possible!" he snapped. Again with the full name thing. "You are _prying_!"

Kim felt a sly smile creep across her face. Spankin'. If she could keep them focused on her - well, as focused as Drakken was ever gonna get - maybe the two of them wouldn't get the chance to hurt anyone else. "Of course I'm prying. If two of my foes are crushin' on each other, I want to know. I'm a shallow, nosy little teenager, remember?"

Drakken gave a grunt that signaled he couldn't help but agree.

Kim dodged another punch. "So - what happened? She seemed to really like you." Of course, DNAmy liked any man that crossed her path, and here was the proof of that. _Drakken_, for Pete's sake. He was like a Picasso, so bizarre and distorted it was hard not to think of him as ugly.

That wasn't quite fair, though. Weirdo looks aside, Drakken had his moments - moments where he could be almost decent, moments when he realized that, oh yeah! there were people in the world besides him. And if there was any good in him, DNAmy would have found it. She made Ron seem like a cynic.

"She did! It was all part of my master plan!" Drakken's words, usually full and robust and trying to sound grander than they were, rattled at their edges. "I was counting on wooing her in order to use her genetics knowledge for my own selfish gain!"

Kim nearly choked at the oh-so-wrong thought of Drakken "wooing" ANYone. "You?" she asked, arching one brow.

"Tell me about it, right?" Shego agreed. She half-grinned at Kim before making another lunge for her. Kim backflipped away from it and came to a stop right in front of Drakken.

He, naturally, didn't make a move for her except with his mouth. Some strange glimmer shone on his blue skin. "What I didn't count on was. . ."

Drakken broke off, and in that instant Kim understood - and laughter tumbled out of her. Drakken had planned on emotionally manipulating DNAmy into doing his dirty work. But _he'd _fallen for _her _instead. Because he was _sooooo _hardened like that.

"Liking her back?" Kim asked. She ducked Shego's flames. "Is that what you didn't count on?"

She could hear Drakken's teeth grinding. He nodded, a motion stocked with resentment. "She - she was caught off guard by my proposal."

Kim skidded right to a halt. "Your proposal of a partnership?" she asked, hoping for it with everything in her. Because even Drakken couldn't be that impulsive, that childish, that totally clueless. . .

"No. His proposal of marriage." Kim almost didn't recognize Shego's voice without the sarcasm.

_Oh. My. Gosh._

A loud sigh built in the gap where Kim wasn't sure whether to giggle or cry. Drakken let out an ever-valiant sniffle.

That told Kim everything she needed to know. "Let me guess - she said no." Strangely, she noticed the entire gym was quiet, waiting for Drakken's answer, waiting to know who they were dealing with before they mounted a counter-attack. Kim halfway hoped they wouldn't. Not that she wouldn't have appreciated the help, but she didn't want anyone risking their lives against two crooks she'd defeated dozens of times.

It was a shaky little boy who glared back at her. He couldn't possibly have been her pompous arch-foe. Drakken hunched over, looking ready to melt as if he were made of crayon wax. His contacts swam.

Kim swallowed an _And you're surprised by this?_ There was delivering a much-needed blow to that ego, and then there was twisting the knife.

Especially since there was something about the glimmer on Drakken's face that suggested maybe him and DNAmy together wouldn't have been a reign of terror. Maybe he would have actually settled down, started a new life.

Kim found herself wondering, not for the first time, who Drakken was when he wasn't a power-hungry villain. "I - I'm sorry," she said, and she meant it. Because if it had meant Drakken would get to _be_ that person and not her bratty little nemesis, she would have attended the wedding herself.

"You are not!" Drakken shot back in the manner of a hurt seven-year-old. "You hate me! You _want _me to be miserable!"

Kim blinked. _Hate _Drakken? Nah. She didn't especially mind his misery, but she wasn't lapping it up, either.

Shego hacked up a surprisingly squeaky laugh. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, Doc, I'm sure she hates me more."

Yeah, she'd hit the nail on the head.

Drakken turned his glower on Shego. He was really rockin' the unibrow today. "Would you just stay out of this?" he barked.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Shego said, switching off her plasma. She spun to face Drakken, eyes exaggeratedly wide. "Do you want me to let Kimmy wipe the floor with you?"

"Errrgh! No!" Drakken was nearly shrieking, which Kim knew meant he couldn't dial his frustration back down into menace. "Just stay out of it - verbally!" His lower lip spooned out. A pang of pity for him licked at Kim's insides.

That lasted until Drakken leveled the laser directly between her eyes. "Give me the dinosaur!" he snarled.

"Dinosaur?" For a moment, Kim was genuinely lost. "What di - ohhh." She worked on not letting her gaze shift to the carry-on gateway-to-another-dimension. "What makes you think I have it?"

The right half of Drakken's eyebrow nearly left his forehead. "Don't play games with me, Kim Possible!" His hands shook on the laser gun. "I know you managed to zap it into an alternate universe or something!"

Shego's hands flashed a warning as they lashed toward Kim, who did a semi-somersault straight between Shego's legs. Kim forced out a laugh that she hoped was self-deprecating. "You really think I could do that? The Tweebs fill the child-genius quota in our family, not me."

Drakken's already long chin drooped. "Who are these Tweebs of which you speak?" he demanded, sounding almost Shakespearean.

It was so ridiculous that Kim answered him without thinking. "The twins. My little brothers," she said - and then immediately could have ripped her tongue out.

Drakken wasn't generally the type to hunt down someone's family, but as near as Kim could figure, he had a grudge against every Possible except maybe Mom. Even now, a shadow fell across him. The Tweebs had, after all, been the ones who had fried the circuits of his mind-control chips, leaving Shego ready, willing, and able to give him the trouncing he'd been asking for.

But - and it could have been Kim's imagination - Shego's searing glare flickered to something softer. Kim had a fleeting flash of the Wegos, dopey enough to be charmingly innocent, before Shego flung a foot straight at her face. Mantus Kung Fu kicked in, and Kim shifted her weight to her fingers and toes, flattening out of Shego's range. From below, she grabbed onto the tightly-clad-in-green-and-black leg and tumbled Shego to the floor.

When Shego hit, Kim saw her sneer twist, pushing the pain back where it belonged, somewhere deep inside. And then she saw something else, directly over Shego's shoulder, peering through the gym's OTHER set of double doors that _hadn't _been blown to bits.

A face. A blond-topped face, white all the way to the tips of its ginormous ears.

Ron pointed right at Kim and formed the "OK" sign with his fingers. The question mark hung in the air with no need to be said.

Kim shot Ron her best Shego's-trying-to-incinerate-me-of-course-I'm-not-okay look and then snapped back to Shego. The girl's observance was deadly. If Kim paid too much attention to Ron, Shego would notice, and she'd go for him -

_Draw her fire. Draw her fire!_ Kim commanded herself.

A smirk wasn't that hard to drum up around Shego, especially a Shego untangling herself from the floor and brushing off the humiliation. "Hey, Shego," Kim called. "Did you never get the memo that jumpsuits went out in the '70s, or do you just _like _looking like something from the disco era?"

As Kim had hoped, Shego's pale greenness sharpened into an ax head. She flung her body of curvy sinew at Kim, aiming directly at Kim's midriff, and Kim knocked her back in the nick of time with a kick to the gut. The gym erupted into chants of "Go, Kim! Go, Kim!", Monique loudest of all.

Dr. Drakken's anger roared over the din. "That dinosaur was our child!"

Si-ick. Just when Kim had thought he could never surprise her again.

Before she could get out an "Uh, excuse me?", Shego had whirled on her boss again. "Genetics _really _isn't your strong suit, is it?" she coughed.

"POETICALLY SPEAKING!" Drakken growled, though there was nothing poetic about his raspy, crackled yell. "It was our creation - and it's the only thing I have left of her - and I'm going to take it away - so she'll never have it - and she'll be sorry she turned me down!"

Kim swallowed. She'd grown so accustomed to Drakken's pouty voice, she'd almost forgotten how harshly it could blare out when he was truly furious. By the way the kids' shouts had quieted to freaked-out mumbles, she was sure it had had its desired effect on them, too.

And that was when the utter absurdity of the situation hit her. Was this a custody dispute - over a dinosaur? One that was quantum-locked in another dimension, to boot?

It was that last part that stopped Kim's laughter halfway up her throat. Drakken may have been a total failure when it came to anything that required cunning or common sense, but he _did_ have a way with technology. If any three people could manage to trip the trigger on that portal, it would be Wade, Dad - and Drakken.

Uh, make that _four _people. Because Justine strolled into the room as if she were taking the stage at Honors Night, as if nothing happening around her was the slightest bit strange. Who would have ever thought Kim would be glad to see this girl?

Justine hooked her wrists confrontationally to her sides, just the way Drakken was doing with his laser-free hand. "Um, excuse me, Mr. Strange Complexion?" she began, her pitch its usual monotone. Not a trace of anxiety showed on her flat face. "Aren't you a little late to be entering this science fair? And a little old? Or - do you just want to steal my kinomatic continuum disruptor?"

Drakken was rendered speechless.

While he sputtered vowel-only noises, Shego sauntered toward Justine, her eyes glittering with amusement. "You must be Justine," she said.

"Shego, I told you to stay out of this!" Drakken's screech was indignant. "This is a battle of brains, not brawn!"

_Hello!_ part of Kim wanted to cry. _I'm still here! _But Justine had to have a plan - she always had a plan - and it felt good to be actual partners. Kim simply inched slightly closer to the real menace - Shego - ready to pounce if needed.

Kim saw Shego's hatchet look tighten, which could only mean Drakken was about to get it in the backside. "I have brains, too!"

"All right, then," Drakken replied nasally. It was a perfect imitation of Bonnie Rockwaller when she didn't get her own way. "Answer me this: What does 'quantum-locked' mean?"

Shego's chin stuck out until it looked like Drakken's own. "Fine," she muttered. "Do your geek thing. See if I care."

Kim fought back a smile of triumph. Shego would never admit it, but she'd been bested. That was probably why she came off the ground, all feral cat, and went for Kim again. Kim threw herself back into the fight, careful to keep away from the plasma hands.

From this close range, Shego's skin was silky smooth, clear of even a swollen pore. It sent a ripple through Kim - of envy, followed by a realization that Shego couldn't have been more than twenty-three. How did someone get that hard that young? Kim could understand why she'd wanted to break free of those dweeby brothers of hers, but what about the dark side had been so attractive to Shego? It couldn't be the stunning success her fellow baddies were having.

Above Shego's wildcat snarls, Kim could hear Justine saying, "You knew the disruptor was quantum-locked?"

"Lucky guess. But thank you for confirming it." Drakken hitched one shoulder. Its broadness appeared to shift back and forth before dropping back in a spot nearer to his arm than before.

Pads. Drakken had been wearing shoulder pads all along. He really _was_ just a little boy in his daddy's clothes.

A little boy with weapons that could wipe Middleton High off the map.

Right now, that little boy was gearing up for a major tantrum. Both trembling hands were wrapped around the laser's trigger, leaving neither free for overdramatic gestures. He was getting down to business, and Kim's throat throbbed with the signs of danger.

It was _so_ not beneath Drakken to try and fry all the people he hated, but Justine hadn't done squat to him. Would he really do it?

Kim didn't know, and she wasn't going to risk finding out. She bolted for the geek battle, but Shego planted herself in her path, arms flung out as if they belonged on a scarecrow. Kim had to backpedal to keep from getting whacked in the head.

Shego lifted her lip down at her. "Poor Kimmy," she oozed. "You still think you can rumble with the big girls?"

Fury ripped through Kim, but she almost hear Nana telling her, _Don't let your anger distract you, Kimberly Ann._ She channeled the burn through her entire body, wrapping herself in it like ninja garb, and thrust a newly driven kick toward Shego.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, Drakken kept the laser almost steady between Justine's eyes. "You're a smart girl, Justina - " he was saying.

"Justine," her partner corrected him.

"Whatever." Drakken flung his hands up, laser and all. Then something dawned on his face and he leveled the weapon back on Justine. "So I'm sure you know denying me isn't the intelligent thing to do!"

"And giving the disruptor to you so you can rip a hole in time and space _is_?" she demanded.

"Uh, ye-es!" Drakken's voice broke into a place he obviously hadn't meant to let it go. "Then you get to stay ali-ive!"

_Seriously? And he calls ME the immature teenager?_

Justine tipped her head at him. It was the first time Kim had seen her precise blond bob budge. "How do I know that?" she asked. Her eyes still gave nothing away, but Kim could imagine how quickly the wheels were spinning in her head. Though the science they churned out was way beyond Kim, she knew the same thought beat under it: _I can't let anyone get hurt. I can't let anyone get hurt._

Cue Droopy Drakken. Drakken was a master of the sad face, or "crestfallen countenance," as Wade liked to call it when he was in a playful mood. Once upon a time, she would have retreated from geek-speak like that, but now she found it endearing. Wade had a better command of scientific jargon than even Drakken or Kim's dad, and hearing it in his cute little I-haven't-hit-puberty-yet voice was a paradox Kim was used to by now. "Because - because - because - "

Justine folded her arms firmly. "No, I've made my choice," she said, every bit as calm as ever. "I'm not giving it to you."

_Go, Justine! _and _You are so dead _warred on Kim's tongue.

Pink blotches broke out on Drakken's neck. "Fine!" he snapped for a second time, twitching and blinking as if he'd been stung by a bee. "You've sealed your fate, then!"

He raised the laser and took in a huge breath. Kim broke Shego's armlock on her with what she would later chalk up to sheer crime-fighter desperation. She cartwheeled across the gym, which had never seemed larger, fingers pulsing.

Then Justine was mumbling something about touching up her lip gloss, and Drakken was grumbling okay, and she was reaching into her pocket. Then there was a sizzle that nearly set off the smoke alarms.

Kim stopped in a handstand to look at Drakken. His spikes were even spikier than usual, the blueness leaking from his face, before he toppled to the ground, stiff as a pressed shirt. As his eyelids slammed shut, Kim saw the aqua sparks of electricity leaping from his lab coat.

Justine stood over him, modestly victorious, feeding a wire back into her lip-gloss tube. "Lipstick taser," she explained when she saw Kim glance at her like, _Huh?_ "Never leave home without it."

Kim could have hugged her.

Shego gaped at Drakken's board-like form, caught off guard only for a half second. Half a second was enough, however. Now it was time for the fun part.

Using that instant to its full advantage, Kim leapt on Shego and took her to the ground, kneeling Shego's hands right into the floor, her own hands slapped on either side of her throat. Kim wasn't sure how long she'd able to hold her down - Shego was a good six inches taller than her, and Kim suspected Hego wasn't the only one in that family to get some superstrength.

One of the basketball player boys loped over to Kim and presented her with the rope that usually hung from the gym ceiling. "Here," he said, shyness barely covering his awe.

Kim rewarded him with a smile to show that really was a big help - and because he was kinda cute. She was looping the rope around Shego's wrists and hoping it was good and scratchy when Ron's skinny silhouette appeared in the intact doorway again.

Shego hissed under her breath. Kim was surprised she wasn't puffing up to twice her normal size and spitting while she was at it. Before she could even start to throw Kim off, though, Drakken's voice croaked from the floor. "It's not worth it, Shego." His eyes, hardly open but still spitting sparks, slid right through Ron. "He's nothing!"

Kim somehow managed not to punch him in the face. It got a little easier when Drakken shot to his feet and promptly collapsed over sideways, because he'd never figured out that the average human body didn't recover that quickly. Drakken absolutely despised being average, Kim knew.

And it got a _lot _easier once Ron was joined by a form too big to be anyone but Mr. Barkin. _His _shoulders didn't need pads, and they were lying level and stern as he marched toward the barely-moving, groggy Drakken.

"So, you thought you could vandalize Middleton High's famous science fair, huh, punk?" Barkin spat down at the mad scientist. "Well, you thought wrong! I am on duty here - I am ALWAYS on duty here - and I don't take kindly to some good-for-nothing taking a gym full of students hostage!"

Ron's eyes sparkled. Kim could imagine him thinking, _Oooh, BURN_.

To her surprise, Drakken's cheeks squeezed toward each other. Tears were hovering when he garbled, "Not _all _the students. I just wanted Kim Possible! I just wanted the dinosaur! It was the only thing I had left of her!"

Barkin was obviously getting none of this, but Kim understood enough to soften her the tiniest bit toward the moaning man-child sprawled on the gym floor. Drakken must have seen it on her face, because his own chilled with anger. "The only thing left to get revenge on her with!" he clarified. "And you all ruined it!"

Drakken rose again, slower this time, his nose level with Mr. Barkin's chin. He was opening his mouth to continue with the you-meddling-kids-and-your-nosy-dog routine when Barkin snatched his wrist with fingers bigger than it was.

"You are to leave the property this minute!" Barkin shouted. Every word had the force of a slap behind it. "The police have been called, and you're going to have to explain why you blew up a perfectly good set of double doors - "

_And didn't sign in at the office._

" - and didn't sign it at the office!" Barkin poked a meaty finger into Drakken's wispy chest. Drakken meeped.

Good old Barkin.

Drakken let his fists drop, defeated, to his sides. The laser had long since fallen out of them, and was currently being held by one of Brick's football buddies. Even Drakken was smart enough to know when he was completely licked. Usually.

Drakken's third "Fine!" echoed off the walls and crept under Kim's skin. He followed it up with a "hrrumph!" and one tiny foot punching the smooth planks. His soft boots didn't even make a sound. "I'm going!" he conceded, and the whine was clear despite the gravel in it. "Come on, Shego."

"Like I care," was Shego's response. She flared her plasma to life and scorched the rope right off her wrists. Once free, she smirked at Kim and strode away, all that hair flapping like cloth behind her. Drakken slunk off in brokenhearted-puppy fashion. At the hollowed-out place where the doors used to be, he turned around and attempted to scorch Kim with malice. His hatred was threaded so thinly over the part of him that hadn't healed from DNAmy's rejection, it was almost laughable.

What wasn't was the damage to the school. The doors - they'd _just _gotten those re-varnished. It was NOT going to be within the budget to replace them. For Pete's sake, they didn't even have a climbing rope anymore!

The guilt sawed away at Kim's satisfaction as she sank onto a deserted corner of the bleachers. She hadn't done it perfectly, so now it was up to her to fix it -

"Hey, Kim."

Kim looked up into a face that could always make her happy. "Where have you been?" she asked Ron.

"Getting Barkin." Ron puffed out his chest. "I saw you were in trouble, and I ran to get him 'cause I can't do anything - plus Mrs. Rosso totally wouldn't have believed that a blue guy had you cornered in the gym with a laser - " He gasped for air. "Did our volcano get totaled?"

"Yours and Monique's? Nah, it's fine," Kim assured him. She snuck a look at him sideways, out of the corners of her eyes, searching for the lazy kick-back-and-let-someone-else-do-all-the-work kid he'd been all week. "So you helped her work on it?"

Ron nodded. "Uh, yeah."

"Good, because Ron -" Kim leaned forward, all the sternness she hadn't gotten the chance to use on Drakken gathering up - "this isn't going to happen anymore. The slack-off thing. Not when it involves someone other than you. If you need help with something, I'll help, and I bet Monique will, too. But we aren't going to carry you anymore."

Another nod from Ron. His head was hanging as though a scolding was just beginning to sink in. "I know," he said. "It was at the last second, but I decided I should come through. 'Cause it hit me, in my dark night of the soul: I may tank at a lot of things, but I don't want to tank at being a friend."

_That _was the Ron she couldn't live without. The honest, vulnerable one. Still, she had to ask. . .

"Dark night of the soul?"

"Actually, it was while I was brushing my teeth last night. Or gargling. I forget which. That just sounded way cooler." Ron gave her a sheepish grin. His eyes, though, stopped short of the "grin" part and simply stayed sheepish.

Something he had said zapped Kim like Drakken's stupid little laser. "Wait - you went to get Mr. Barkin because you 'can't do anything'?"

"Uh, yeah," Ron told her, just this side of an eye-roll. "Why do you think I - "

" - didn't ever do any work on the science projects," Kim groaned. With her suspicions confirmed, she wasn't sure which friend she felt sorrier for. "But - you could at least try. My dad's always saying that it's better to try and fail than not to try at all."

"Yeah, and what else is he always saying?"

"You mean besides that totally embarrassing thing about why you should eat fruit?"

"Everything's possible for a Possible!" Ron said, at a volume that would be turning heads any minute. "You can do anything. I'm a Stoppable. Everything's _stoppable_ for me, and I don't even know what that means! Even Drakken says I'm nothing."

Kim sat on the urge to track Drakken down and punch him in the face anyway. "Drakken also says that the world rightfully belongs to him just because he'd look really cool in a crown."

"Oh. . . point."

"And - don't tell anyone - but he proposed to a woman he'd just met the day before." Ron's own "crestfallen countenance" erased any remorse Kim might have felt at dishing on Drakken's love life. "She turned him down _flat_."

Ron tickled her ears with a giggle. "Really? Who?"

Kim arched a brow. "DNAmy," she whispered.

That was good for a hoot that lifted Kim's spirits right back up. So she'd chip in part of her allowance to the school board until the damages were fixed. It was doable. So not the drama.

Ron grew uncharacteristically quiet and peered at her through the bangs that were getting too long again. "_Do _I tank as a friend?" he asked, much more softly.

Kim sat straight up and planted her hands on her hips. "Okay: school picture day. You hung out with a monkey all day - which is like anyone else running around with a king cobra - treated it like royalty because you thought it was me, and you _still _have to ask me that?"

"Aw, BOO-yah," Ron said right into his pocket. He stuck out a knuckle and bumped Rufus's tiny pink paw. It bordered on adorable for both of them.

Kim let out a big sigh of relief - all today's crises had been averted. She wrapped her arm around Ron in a best-friend hug and she left it there.

**~Admission time: I stole "quantum-locked" from _Doctor Who_ (though I made it mean something different here - well, actually I'm not quite sure WHAT it meant on _DW_). And "lipstick taser" is totally from _Despicable Me 2_. **

**Hang in there, sports fans! Next chapter's gonna be a doozy. Ya see, there's this little thing called "prom. . ." ~**


	9. This April

**~Sorry for the long wait, guys. Hope it was worth it.  
**

**Annnnnnnd here we are. This is actually going to be a fairly short chapter, since I figured y'all already know what happens on So the Drama. The BIG chapter will be in May, when Drakken goes to trial.~  
**

**Him**

"Hey, little boy, are you living in the shadows?

Hey, little boy, are you living in the shadows?

Can you feel them clutch, it's an icy touch

And it costs so much

Living in the shadows"

Dr. Drakken was preening. He couldn't help it.

He had to look perfect when the world fell before him.

Drakken had long since accepted that he was never going to be handsome, but the off-putting nature of his odd features and the smoothness of his fancy suit and the suave, smug smile he'd been practicing for months made for an intimidating package. When you looked this good, you had to flaunt it. And Drakken looked like a million bucks.

Especially since they were hauling in even _more _money than that from the Bueno Nacho franchise. Most of it, of course, from kiddie meals. It was the most delicious piece of irony yet - people were _paying _him for the very devices that were going to activate come midnight and subjugate them all. Drakken had it on good authority that even Kim Possible's little computer friend had a Li'l Diablo of his own. Smart as the boy admittedly was, he had no idea that the cute li'l toy was booby-trapped - and that _he_ was the booby.

The suit was shamelessly gaudy, and Drakken loved it. Especially the padding that muscled out a body too delicate by far.

It was close. It was so close.

His Diablos were lying dormant in nearly every home on the globe, awaiting his command. At the devil's hour, they would rise and trample six billion people into submission for him.

The timing was intentional, too. "Nothing good ever happens after midnight, unless it's a healthy birth," some old wise man had once said. Not as wise as Drakken - but, hey, he was still humble enough to consider some advice.

The Diablos, though, were only a fraction of the entire scheme. A very _BIG_ fraction, but still not the whole pie graph. There was also Eric. Faithful Eric, who Drakken had chiseled into the hottest hunk of Syntho-flesh ever made. Right now, he was accompanying Kim Possible to her vacuous little high-school prom, treating her like a princess, when she wasn't even that anymore. She was a fly, and Drakken was the spider, luring her into his domain without her suspecting a thing.

And Eric was the thread - strong as steel and somehow magnetic. Not in the scientific sense, but Drakken had observed it almost seemed physically impossible for his teen foe to tear herself away from the Synthodrone's side. Pride glimmered in Drakken: pride that something that powerful could be the work of _his _hands, pride that he had pledged his unfailing loyalty to Drakken's cause. Pride that even now swelled in Drakken's chest.

The Plan was no longer just a hypothesis. Nor was it even a theory. It was true, it was a fact, it was history in the making. The three of them would watch together as civilization tore itself apart - Drakken and Shego and Eric, the closest things he would ever have to a sister and a son.

The old Drakken - the one who cringed and looked away watching reruns of _Heart of the Hospital _- he could never have pulled this off. No, his rage and bitterness could only manifest itself in childish fit-pitching which frightened no one.

Oooh, he _loved _this suit. The shiny blue fabric made his shoulders look more compact than bony. Its rhinestones and sequins danced your eyes all over and distracted you from his awkward proportions. And the open neck with the black underneath gave his chest a broad, foreboding appearance. Gazing at himself in the mirror, it occurred to Drakken that, as little as two weeks ago, he would have been scaring _himself _right now.

He feared nothing anymore.

Initially, Drakken had been surprised and giddy that The Plan was actually succeeding. No Plan had ever gotten this far before. But then, he'd never plunged so deeply into the darkness inside him, never tapped its full potential.

As far as Drakken knew, he was incapable of being surprised anymore. Since, however, his world-conquering weapons were pouched away, waiting to be released like mushroom spores on the wind - and since no one was around for him to impress - he let himself be a bit giddy.

Even now, though, there was a cold calmness in his economy of movement. It was as if a spell had been cast over him, and far be it from him to break it. Because genius alone wasn't enough. You had to be b-b-bad to the b-b-bone, too.

And Drakken was.

He had to save some giddiness for later tonight, too. After all, he was about to become Prime Ruler Of The Planet Earth! There was nothing that could be an overreaction to that.

Drakken straightened his shoulder pads, wider than what would fit in the skinny, squiggly mirror, and fixed a half-sneer on his face. The kind that he said he was fierce and cutthroat and much too cool for you, Kim Possible.

Shivers of eagerness gripped the pit of his stomach. There was yet another factor, one Drakken hadn't even mapped out. It had simply evolved on its own. Eric had driven a wedge between Kim Possible and the kid so buffoonish his name didn't deserve to be remembered. Useless as the boy was, somehow he and Kim Possible made a good team. If one could split them up, one could doubtlessly conquer the world. Drakken had had a dream about that once, only it hadn't been him who. . .

_Dreams are irrelevant,_ he reminded himself sternly. Only his goal counted anymore, and it was nearer and nearer with every tick of the clock. His ever-quickening heartbeat pounded in his temples like a thousand drums. Like a declaration of war. A war Drakken would win, no matter what it took.

Drakken straddled a corner of his desk and wiped the anticipatory sweat from his palms. It was tempting, it was so very tempting, to lean back in the chair and kick his feet, clad in fancy new leather soft soles, up on the desktop, the way he'd wanted to ever since he saw the shiny surface more like a counter than a desk. But that was a distracted, juvenile position, the kind that had gotten him labeled a dummy and a loser.

It was working to Drakken's advantage right now, the universal underestimation. Yet - _ohhhh_, that glorious moment when the world would know he was neither one.

The Possibles, for one, would certainly regret pegging him as such. They would be sorry. They would be oh-so-sorry - if people _could _be sorry wherever they were going.

James Possible's face, left over from two weeks before, flashed in Drakken's brain. Sharp-chinned, eyes glittering with a cruelty to rival Drakken's own. "My daughter isn't afraid of you," he'd sneered. "Why should I be - _Drew_?"

The coolness had warred with the flames of anger, and both had come out as Drakken had snarled back, "Stop calling me that. I am not the man you knew in college."

It was logical, and it was level, but it hadn't wiped the leer straight off James's lips as it should have. "Still can't get a date, though, I bet," he'd chuckled.

Some chink in Drakken's armor could still register pain. No, he couldn't get a date, but he'd come to terms with that by now. No woman was ever going to love him. He was too damaged. DNAmy had been the only woman twisted enough and kind enough to understand him.

It had been the knowing that that was what had tipped him over the breaking point back in college. Poor, pathetic little Drew Lipsky, who hadn't been able to score dates for himself or the boys he trusted as his friends. And it was the scorn cut into James's expression, telling Drakken that James remembered too, and that was exactly why he'd said it.

Why didn't he just wag his tongue at Drakken and taunt, "I ruined your life and I'm smiling about it! Nah-nah-nah-nah"?

Drakken began his hurt-conversion process. It had to be changed to fuel, or he would fail. He would fail, and then the hurt would slam into him so hard -

He wasn't sure his skin would stand up to what was pumping under it.

"You'll always just be Drew Lipsky." James's voice looped around on mental replay. "The science student who couldn't make the grade."

That _hadn't _been how it happened. It _hadn't_. And all Drakken had wanted was an apology. He'd laid his agony and heartbreak before James and given him a fair chance to express remorse, and it hadn't worked.

The only way to rectify the situation now was to smear agony and heartbreak into James's life, too. He and his rotten little family of do-gooders had punished Drakken for every sin Drakken had ever committed, but who held _them _accountable for _their _mistakes?

Yes, a debt was yet to be paid. Drakken glanced at the genuine-silver wall clock with its fancy scrolled hands. Only another two hours and fifty-eight minutes, and the scales would tip in his favor. He'd waited for decades; he could last a little longer.

That was how he could tell he was different. This wasn't the old Drakken's hot temper, which had never done him any good. No, this fury matched Shego's - cold and calculated, with supreme confidence in its deadliness, so that there was no need for threats.

Drakken raked in a fiery breath, blew out through slit nostrils, grimaced at the roil in his gut. His stomach hadn't been feeling so great lately - probably all that spicy Bueno Nacho food. And even though it was only April, the springification outside seemed to leave the room so blasted _warm_. Uncomfortably so.

Evil whispered his destiny, though, and he went to it without hesitation. It was the only way.

Drakken had had moments when he was sane enough to know he was mad, the thoughts and schemes tangled in a dizzying jumble in his head. Now he was mad enough to know that he was sane, everything smooth. Crisp. Clear.

It even made his hands appear larger. Drakken wrapped them into bloodless fists and squeezed them over his ribs. There was a burn that could have been mistaken for a heart attack if he hadn't known it was deep, wicked longing.

_Take one last good look at your world, Kimberly Ann. For soon it shall be mine!_ Drakken's chest rumbled with a sinister snicker.

Of course he would defeat Kim Possible tonight. Because she was soft and he was hard. Soft turned out hurting, hard turned out numb. Hard conquered the world. Some choice.

And the loss of their favorite heroic cheerleader would do wonders to squash the morale of the general populace. As recently as a few weeks back, Drakken had aimed for preserving Kim Possible so she would be around to witness his triumph. Now, though, he had realized he'd been so intent on gloating to her that he'd risked the very thing he'd burned to gloat over becoming a nonevent. Drakken still had the desire to make her watch, but if she got in his way, he'd squash Kim Possible like so much Play-Doh.

Drakken caught himself just before he could sigh. He hadn't played with Play-Doh in such a vast amount of time. He missed it. Real supervillains didn't squish Play-Doh between their fingers just for fun.

The suit suddenly seemed too tight through the chest, pinching at the elbows. It was as if he was physically expanding, like a caterpillar emerging from the cocoon of the old, pathetic Drakken into this new, deadly version. Uncomfortable, but so, so glorious.

It sent a ripple of nervous energy through his bloodstream, but Drakken forced himself to stay perfectly still. So much as the tiniest finger-twiddle could usher in the old rush-and-crash version of himself he'd worked so hard to bury. Not even the ponytail was permitted to move.

Instead, Drakken shifted his eyes to the endless night outside his grand window. Somewhere out there were the Diablos, so beautiful, so unpredictable. So beautiful _because_ they were so unpredictable.

Drakken hadn't really seen the Diablos in action before. To awaken the cybertronic technology within them would require activating the signal towers, and Computer Kid would have been on him before you could say "federal offense." He'd tested some in their little kiddie-meal incarnations and translated it exponentially, and he had enough theoretical calculations to determine they would be more than competent enough to bring down the world as he knew it. Yet the fine print, so to speak, of their capabilities remained unknown, even to Drakken.

Well, there was only one way to find out.

This time, Drakken repressed the chuckle. His Plan was virtually a guaranteed no-fail, but anyone who saw him giggling away before The Plan even went into effect would just assume he was being overconfident again. Drakken wasn't going to make _that _mistake again. No, he had to remain calm just a little bit longer.

Tonight he was untouchable. Tonight he was a god.

Drakken fell back against his exquisitely cushioned chair. It was sparer, more rigid than his comfy old easy chair back at the haunted-island lair, but every bit as plush. The firm back molded his spine into better posture, which in turn made him infinitely more intimidating. For years, Drakken had believed his mad-scientist hunch was scary, when in truth it came across as the cower of a man already beaten. Now he carried himself with the dignity of a man who would never be beaten again.

His old favorite piece of furniture had been his Thinking Chair. A Power Chair was the natural progression. And by this time tomorrow, it would be his throne. He would own all the department stores, all the banks, all the museums and palaces and temples. . .

The phone on Drakken's desk jangled abruptly. It gave him a shot of pure biological adrenaline, readying his body for fight or flight. Just as he'd taught himself, Drakken chose "fight" and stuffed it down deep into his inner recesses. Holding it, preparing for the battle of his life.

If it was another disgruntled customer whining about the bendy straws. . .

Drakken lifted the phone to his ear and inhaled in the crisp, cultured manner befitting a supreme ruler. "_Hola_, Bueno Nacho Headquarters," he said professionally. That was about the extent of his Spanish. He was going to have to learn a lot more if he wanted to rule over Mexico and Spain and Central America -

Nah. He'd just force them all to speak English instead. Much easier.

The voice on the other end was Shego's, and Drakken had to fend off a grin at the sound of it. He hadn't told her his plot this time, hadn't even given her the abbreviated version. She didn't have a clue what he was up to. He had the upper hand, a dark, shadowy hand that would soon descend on the entire world.

All Shego had pieced together was that Drakken was being smart and keeping his mouth shut, and that he somehow had super-secret technology at his disposal, and it was enough. Enough to earn him something just a few notches shy of Shego's respect. Her words didn't bite at Drakken like darts anymore. They flowed over him and lifted him up.

That alone justified every sacrifice he'd made for The Plan. Forget gold and jewels - it was as rare and precious as the diamonds that lay miles below the earth's surface.

"Shego!" Drakken snapped. "Status report!"

"It's a mixed bag," Shego said calmly. He could _hear _her perfectly straight lips. They hadn't done their twitchy thing at his expense in weeks.

Drakken gripped the receiver until the skin under his nails turned milky. "What?!"

"On the positive side, global saturation has reached optimum level." Ooh, how it sizzled inside him to hear Shego using terms like those. "We can strike at midnight."

Yes! Victory was nigh! Drakken could taste it every time he breathed, and it was tantalizing.

There was something hesitant about Shego's pause, however, something that went beyond her usual lack of whooping and cheering. "But. . . ?" Drakken asked. His pulse had audibly picked up speed that must have pushed it past 200 beats-per-minute.

"Well, there's a snag," Shego admitted.

A hot dose of fear hit Drakken in the face. A snag? But The Plan had accounted for everything! How could there be a snag?

And Drakken knew with dread in his heart that it could only be due to one person.

"Kim Possible!" He heaved up the much-hated name the way his gut threatened to do with dinner. There was no more room for giddiness. In spite of the excessive heat that seemed to radiate from his very core, Drakken got to work freezing everything over. He couldn't be cold enough.

"How'd you guess?" Shego asked. It should have been a quip, but it wasn't. She sounded disappointed, as if she'd actually been looking forward to his rise to power.

Well, she wasn't looking forward to it as much as Drakken was. She wasn't the one with goose bumps popping out on her arms at this very instant. She wasn't the one whose entire being was going to break in two if he didn't accomplish it.

Drakken was surprised at the desperation that clawed its way up his throat. He didn't do desperate, not anymore. He dug his knuckles into his hair, so carefully combed and gelled into businesslike waves. Think, think, think. He couldn't panic. Could _not_ panic.

The cold place in his chest slowed his skittering blood. Breathed steadiness into his dusty-feeling lungs. All right, Kim Possible knew. Or at least suspected. How? HOW? Drakken had threatened the Bueno Nacho employees with their _lives_ if they let it slip that something was fishy. The only other person he'd told had been that kid with the bendy-straw obsession, the one who had placed Drakken's gravelly growl as soon as he'd heard it. . .

The buffoon! Drakken groaned from within his cramping depths. He'd goaded the buffoon - and the kid gone right to Kim Possible! Had Drakken written his own arrest warrant again?

It would only be a matter of minutes before the naggings reappeared to tell him what a failure he was. Unless Drakken iced them first. He rested his chin on the desktop and summoned his coldest, hardest, meanest thoughts yet.

The whole point of being such a fool was that nobody listened to you! Kim Possible was supposed to not believe him. Why would she? She should have been too enamored with Eric to remember such a far-less-cool boy like that even existed. But now she was on his trail, the trail Drakken had worked so hard to cover, and she would swoop in and -

Drakken couldn't even think the rest. It would cut him, a cut that would swell with infection and never stop hurting. To be denied victory _now_, after all he'd labored for, after he'd taken every precaution that could be took?

No. It was unthinkable.

"No. Not this time." Drakken's voice sounded dead, because the exclamation points were in a ten-car pileup on the other side of his skull. Fury was knotting him, and he couldn't let it tear his new self apart. "We strike the rest of the world at midnight as planned. But I want Middleton online - "

Drakken paused and scanned his brain for dissent. Hesitation. A stab from his conscience that would squeak, _You can't do this._

He found nothing. He'd wrangled with his weaknesses and he'd won at last.

" - now."

And even the nags were unafraid.

When they had hung up, Drakken punched his palms up to his eye sockets until he was sure his optical nerves were going to sever. Anger had him in a tight headlock, demanding a return to the agonized grunts and rants. If he didn't do something soon, his surface tension would break, and the old Drakken would reappear.

True, he had been very patient lately, but it was the strained patience of a man anticipating "delayed gratification," to use a psychology term. Should that gratification be delayed any further - or, heaven forbid, taken away altogether - Drakken knew he would go insane.

It thrashed in his head like a guilty swear word you couldn't get rid of. Back when there was guilt, before a walk-in freezer had replaced it.

Kim Possible was cheating, no two ways about it. What, did she have a third eye that she kept trained on him at all times? Why couldn't she ever, just once, mind her own business? Drakken could imagine her eyes, the eyes that had to investigate everything, snapping.

He couldn't wait to see those eyes without the life in them. First the perky confidence would leave, followed by the will to live, then the very threads of existence.

_That's right. The abhorrence. Feel it. Swim in it._

Drakken rose from his Power Chair and crossed the tar-black floor at the furthest thing from a skitter he'd ever been able to pull out of his legs. At the window, he pressed his fingertips to the cool glass, reaching for the darkness beyond. Although recent studies had shown telekinesis was not yet scientifically possible, Drakken stayed anyway, figuratively absorbing every quark until he _was_ the night, in biped form.

Kim Possible had made her choice to ignore the risks involved in defying him. Now, let her stare terror-stricken into the wrath of Dr. Drakken! Much like the Diablos, it was untested but most assuredly fierce.

Yes, so many options when it came to how to get rid of her. There were Diablos aplenty in Middleton. Maybe even her junior-mad-scientist little brothers had one or two. Activating them to their full size, bigger than skyscrapers, turning their claw-pincher hands to laser blasters, making their eyes glow an evil yellow - that would send Kim Possible a warning at the very least.

Should she survive that - and Drakken actually hoped she would, so he could have a little more fun with her - he had insurance that would bring her right to his door to surrender. And once she did, he would reveal to her what Eric was. _Who _Eric was; his best Synthodrone couldn't be considered a nonliving thing. Then, who knew? He'd leave her to the mercy of his other Synthodrones - or his sharks - or his sumo ninjas - or the ever-reliable Shego. After all, anything was possible. . . for a Possible.

The Power Chair broke Drakken's relieved fall in layers of velvet. Yes, he had a Plan. He had everything under control. Not even that kick-flipping little Possible brat could stop him now. Love wasn't just blind, it was blinding, another reason Drakken was glad he'd sworn off the stuff. She would be so focused on saving Eric and gushing over him that she wouldn't notice she'd walked right into his trap weeks and weeks ago.

Would she actually come to fight him in her prom gown? No doubt it was a skimpy thing more expensive than the entire Bueno Nacho franchise. A dress to die for.

There was nothing delicate about the laugh that burst from Drakken. _Die _for. That was a good one.

Drakken straightened his sequined lapels and tilted his chin at the mirror. The suit had so many squared-off edges, it created an optical illusion that chiseled his jaw, too. Of course, Kim Possible would show up expecting to rescue her hottie, take out Diablo Tower, present Drakken with his latest glorious failure - and make it back to school in time for be crowned prom queen. Because heaven forbid she end the night as anything less. Heaven forbid she experience anything imperfect.

It almost mauled Drakken's settled state, and he ground it between his teeth. He couldn't give up the ice chest inside that was pushing him toward success. No, Kim Possible had no idea what she was getting herself into. She was about to learn a serious lesson about getting in the way of your elders, your superiors. He'd outsmarted her. Who needed a college degree?

The Middleton Institute of Science and Technology just might award him one, though - now that he was going to be overseeing it.

But first things first. There were so many things Drakken wanted to do to Kim Possible before he killed her.

Not that he was planning to chain her up and cut off her toes the way the villain on that channel-72 horror movie did. But he burned inside to watch _her _watch everything be ripped away from her.

Let Kim Possible taste suffering, defeat, humiliation. By the time she had, she'd be begging to taste oblivion. And he would be kind enough to grant it.

Drakken's mouth curled into what he would proudly dub a serpentine smile. This would be his vengeance upon a world that could never be counted on to treat you fairly. He would take what no one would ever give him.

Not only would he acquire gold and jewels and all the government's most advanced technology, he would have honor, respect, adoration. It was easy for Kim Possible to judge him, since _she_'d never needed to coerce or mind-control or menace anyone into liking her. Because she was pretty. Perfect. Popular.

But that ended now. Drakken cracked his neck to get the crick out of it and envisioned himself reigning over everyone who'd ever mocked him, underestimated him. He would have revenge and he would have power - and then he would have peace. Nothing would hurt, not ever again.

His new life would begin tonight.

As soon as Kim Possible's ended.

**Her**

"Hey, little girl, are you living in the shadows?

Far from the sun, is it rosy in the shadows?

Can't you hear the hiss, coming with the kiss

On those hungry lips?

Living in the shadows"

Kim Possible's first thought was, _This is SO far beyond awful._

Not exactly Shakespeare. But _any _words, no matter how eloquent, became inadequate once she saw the face that couldn't belong to her arch-foe yet had to sullying the screen of her Kimmunicator.

The screen being hijacked by Drakken would have been freaky enough. Kim was half-convinced that the real Drakken was hiding somewhere, as scared as she was.

She'd known it was Drakken from the moment those demon-things had sprouted their first six inches on the coffee table. Nakasumi's cute design twisting into the most hideous monster a supervillain mind could dream up, the stolen cybertronic technology, the trademark-Drakken laser cannons, Ron's whining about Bueno Nacho's new unfriendly management. . . it all fit together.

It made perfect sense, which was where it began to break apart for Kim. It couldn't be Drakken. Drakken's plans weren't supposed to actually _work_. It couldn't be Drakken - because Drakken didn't scare her. And this guy, whoever he was, did. A thousand types of terror, most of which she'd never felt before, came racing through Kim's veins. It was a humbling experience she did NOT need now.

And - okay - Kim knew she and her father had put identical chips on Drakken's shoulders. It was _such _a given that he'd kill them if given half a chance. But was she completely naive for suspecting Drakken might have spared Mom, who'd never been anything but nice to him? Or maybe the Tweebs, since they were _twelve - stinkin' - years - old?!_

A cold shudder passed through Kim. Mom had been wrong this time: there was no person in there. There was nothing but evil.

The sound of that evil was all around her now. The Diablos' footsteps quaked the ground at nine on the Richter scale. Kim could hear the whoosh of their blaster arms winding up to fire, the sickening noise of metal giving way under them. But most spirit-stealing of all were the cries of frightened people trying to stay alive.

Those were her _neighbors_ out there. That sweet-faced old lady who was always sweeping invisible cobwebs off her porch, the family that had given Kim her first baby-sitting job back when she was eleven, the cute lifeguard down at the community center. . . Were they hurt? Dying?

Dead?

Kim shook her head, a few tendrils of hair escaping from her carefully-done-up bun to smack against her face. If she knew Drakken, this wasn't limited to Middleton. This was a worldwide attack, which meant Diablos were even now chasing Joss and Uncle Slim up in Montana, Nana in Florida, Ron's friends at the Yamanouchi School in Japan.

It was killing Kim not to be out there in the thick of it, stopping the blasts and the screams. Her Kim-ness was already scolding her for that, as well as the fear and desperation it was trying to shake like tag-along losers in the lunch line. Still, she knew she would be no help to anyone until she could get her_self_ calmed down. It had been forever since she'd been this psyched out by anything, and that was the only reason to stay right where she was now.

And when she glanced down at the face that leered back at her from her Kimmunicator, Kim wasn't sure she _did_ know Drakken, like, at all.

He had her arch-foe's face, but all of the features that she'd been able to identify as _Drakken _from a mile away had vanished. He still had that ponytail, but its spring had stiffened into a blade surely as sharp as the one that had ripped open his face and given him the scar that now crawled in ragged, agonized stitches down his cheek. His skin was still nearly the exact same shade as a robin's egg, but it seemed colder somehow, like a frosted-over sky instead of a sunny one. The narrow lips she'd seen split into a thousand smiles, none of them quite as intimidating as he'd thought they were, were pressed into a cruel line. The ears still jutted like doorknobs on either side of his head - but even if he'd grown a third ear in the middle of his forehead, it wouldn't have been comical enough to detract from the expression of purest evil in his eyes.

Kim fought to reconcile the Drakken who she'd watched to struggle his way out of an _American Starmaker _prop letter, neck veins and everything else on him turning bright red as they popped, with. . . this. This man who wasn't showing a hint of temper, yet looked capable of murder.

This - monster.

Drakken directed a paper cut of a smile at Kim. That was another thing that turned the whole sitch into a steaming pile of whack. Since when had Drakken's smile ever been anything but open and toothy and perfectly readable?

For only about the second or third time in her life, Kim felt she had lost the power of speech. What could she say to this man whose eyes glittered beyond the edges of all reason, anyway?

"Congratulations, Miss Possible." Drakken talked in words that rumbled out of the depths of his chest. Kim didn't remember his voice having that kind of menace. Not to mention the sarcasm he must have borrowed from Shego and kept in perfect condition.

He subtly fanned the spindly fingers. His gestures were tight when they should have been elaborate. _So messed up,_ Kim thought. She'd seen Creepy Drakken before. This wasn't Creepy Drakken. This wasn't Drakken at all. His eyes were blank slates, as if his soul had abandoned his body to commit such atrocities.

Or had he ever really had one? Maybe this was the real Drakken, and she'd just never seen him because none of his schemes had ever gotten this far.

If that was the case, Kim couldn't handle him the way she'd handled baby-Drakken every time before. Not when the stakes were this high. Kim had always gone out of her way to show Drakken some form of mercy, but those days had been games. This was war. Tonight, he was going to get a mouthful of what he'd dished out.

"You've already discovered how to foil my evil scheme," Drakken continued. Kim threw an automatic glance at the Diablo lying face-up on the garage cement. It was tiny again and seemed so harmless now, the only sign of its killer potential the gleam across the so-much-like-Drakken's teeth. There was absolutely no way she would ever go near it again, though, not with the memory of its horns warping to crown itself with the letter "D."

For Diablo? Or for _Drakken_? That _would _be very Drakken, all arrogance and mania and repulsive sadism.

The rage it brought up the length of Kim's spine couldn't have come too soon. Fear wouldn't do her any good at this point, and it could only serve to nourish Drakken's bulging ego.

"In record time, I might add." The deep voice eased its way toward her. There was absolutely no trace of a pout. Drakken's expression, though disgustingly calm, wasn't playing the kinds of poker tricks you'd need to win at the Bermuda Triangle. He clearly thought he had an ace trump up his sleeve. Why wouldn't he wave it in her face the way he always had? "It is most unfortunate, however, that this time you will not stop me."

Kim didn't need to force her eyes to roll. Right. Now _that_ sounded like Drakken's old self. He said that every. Single. Time.

"You will surrender," Drakken said. He took a step back and waggled his eyebrow at her, like he really thought that was all it took. The conceited little loser.

"As if," Kim snorted. It came out free of the shaking she could feel inside. Yeah, she could still do this.

"As if if!" Ron had to chime in. Kim shot him a shut-up-for-your-own-good look. There was no telling what this new, uncaged Drakken might do, and she didn't want Ron to get it in the tail.

Drakken's eyes narrowed until his black eyelids nearly met the equally dark bags under them. His lips pulled back, and his eyeteeth could have passed for fangs. "Shego popped by your school dance and met the nicest boy. Well, I don't have to tell you how nice he is! And cute."

Kim's brain emptied of everything but a single word: _no_. Even her Kim-ness couldn't blame her for the way her fingers trembled on the sides of the Kimmunicator.

Eric.

He had Eric.

She could see him now, in the background, tied to a chair, perfect and terrified and trying not to show it. Suddenly, it didn't matter that he was Kim's prom date, her knight in shining Abercrombie. He was just wonderful Eric, with the endless smile that came up so easily. The hands that were always perfectly sure, whether they were holding a football or her own. The good manners and charm he could lavish on a person without seeming like a suck-up.

"Kim, what's going on?" Eric cried. All the adjectives that came to Kim every time she heard him - _strong, confident, firm_ - didn't apply anymore. He was creamy-white under his tan, and he blinked the way Drakken used to bat his contacts before he'd become Megavillain of the Year.

"Eric!" Kim yipped in a tone she hadn't used since she was about six years old. Judging by the bloodshot gleam in Drakken's stare, he hadn't missed it.

Shego stood over Eric in the background, one foot propped up on his chair as if she were Vanna White presenting today's grand prize. She was glistening with the same evil as Drakken, but at least Kim was USED to Shego's body spitting, _I'm gonna dismember you and love every second of it!_

Kim put her hand over her mouth to keep from throwing up. A sweaty warmth that could have only been Ron's oversized hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed. It was the same best-friend clasp she'd always used on him when _he_ needed reassuring. It was way weird to be on the receiving end of it.

She was roughly yanked into awareness of a lump in her throat, stabbing her eyes with wetness and horror. It was an experience Kim was unfamiliar with - she hadn't cried in over a year. Not over boys. Not over Shego's "Princess" jabs or Bonnie's cheap shots at her every goof-up. And CERTAINLY not over Drakken.

"The choice is yours, Kimberly Ann," Drakken said, all but purring. The middle name was still overkill, but it worked now. Kim had gone as stiff as the bobby pins holding her 'do in place.

Drakken indicated Eric with a jerk of his head that Kim half hoped would snap his neck. It was a thought that stunned her with its viciousness.

"If you care about your dear Eric's safety, surrender is your only option." Drakken squared his shoulders, already padded beyond what the Kimmunicator's tiny screen could hold. Tonight, though, the muscles seemed real. Like he'd somehow managed to bulk up in the two weeks it had been since she'd last seen him. 'Course, he'd been plotting her death then, too, but even as a hologram he'd hung on to a trace of something gawky and dorky.

But Kim didn't have time to think about that right now. Her senses were now in-use, and she honed every minutia of them on Drakken's nasty face. She tried not to consider that it might already be too late, that he may have bested her at long last.

No. The ugly truth rose inside Kim. She'd bested herself. Drakken had just made sure of it. He'd found a weakness Kim hadn't even been aware she had, and she knew he'd kill Eric, without hesitation, just to break her down.

And if he did, mercy would _sooooo _not be an option.

That was when the rage took over, a reeking anger that went deeper than any crime-fighter determination Kim had ever felt. At least the stomach acid killed the fear.

In a moment that made it seem the whole world was slanting, Kim realized she'd never hated Drakken before. Oh, there had been times when one of his plans had majorly messed with her schedule or threatened to hurt someone she loved and she'd briefly thought, _I hate Drakken._ But she hadn't. Not really. Not in a way that made her blood as scorching and lethal as the Diablos' blaster arms and run down to her fingernails, which ached to claw someone's face. _That _feeling was reserved for Shego and Bonnie. Drakken had always been too pathetic a creature for Kim to waste her hatred on.

But the face that had always been round and baby-blue and goofy-looking had ice over it now as he gave Kim one last ghoulish look. His eyes were feral. Just the fact that he existed was a crime against humanity. Even when the screen went black, Kim ferociously wanted to sanitize the Kimmunicator, clean him off it. Yeah, this was hate.

Only at that point did Kim allow herself to start trembling - with resolution. Okay, so Drakken had gone all Dr. No on the world. But if he thought she was going to come quietly and give herself up to watch his victory, he was still bonkers. No, she already had a rescue mission half planned out in her head.

Geminini the pilot would have _really_ come in handy right about now, or Dr. Director and the rest of Global Justice. Or Nakasumi himself, who was probably also beyond tweaked that Drakken had ripped off his design - which, for a mega-rich toymaker, had to be about the same as kidnapping their prom date. But they must have all cringing for their lives in shelters that had been designed to ward off tornadoes, not cybertronic death machines.

Tonight there was no helpful party who felt they owed her a debt. It was just Kim, Ron, and Rufus - and an enemy who now radiated evil like heat. The enemy who she could never again write off as a bumbling brat.

Despair wasn't on the menu either, though. Because - hello! - Kim was surrounded by a family of geniuses, one of whom had invented the very technology Drakken was using. Any given SPECK of their brains was smarter than Drakken's working at full capacity.

Rufus would come in handy, too. How many times had he chewed through ropes and wires and unscrewed knobs that had turned out to be the key to saving everyone?

And though Ron didn't like Eric - he always got super-possessive whenever she made a new friend - he would help Kim with the rescue. He was only about the sweetest guy in the world.

Now that Kim thought about it, she could see how she'd given Ron the short end of the stick ever since she'd met Eric. She'd have to make up for that after prom.

Yeah, Ron would give it his all. He'd come through in a lot of surprising ways lately. And Kim _definitely _wouldn't have wanted to mess with the guy after ruining Bueno Nacho for him. The thought almost brought on a grin.

Then there was Kim herself. She knew her sixteen styles of Kung Fu - and right now, she felt like she could have used all of them at once. Something wild was out of control inside her, drooling for a fight. Shego was never going to know what hit her.

And if she didn't, _Drakken _sure as heck wouldn't. One punch in the jaw from Eric and he would fold like a tent put up wrong. Unless he'd been lifting weights or something as part of the whole transforming-himself-into-a-beast routine.

The Diablos would probably be the hardest to get past. Even if Drakken DID want her alive to surrender, they had probably been programmed to destroy everything in their paths. Kim had stared up into that thing's laser barrel and known that tonight, Drakken was taking no prisoners. Absolutely needed to find a way around those.

Once they did, though, the rest of the plan was simple: Find Drakken's lair, save Eric, tie Shego up in her own hair, and lock the henchmen in the inevitable broom closet. And then she was going to take Drakken down if she had to rip off his limbs and club him over the head with them. They were way beyond what even the kindest teen hero could forgive.

This time, Drakken hadn't just grabbed her and dumped her in a shark tank once she'd become a threat. He'd gone on the offense, seeking her out to take her down. This wasn't just evil beyond words - it had been calculated, maybe months ahead of time.

Kim felt her heartbeat spike up. She'd never gone all crazy-girl on a bad guy before, but could she have _asked_ for a better chance? Drakken had no idea what she was capable of - and she was going to love seeing him find out.

Only the numbness of her fingers, wrapped around each other and squeezing all the color right out of her hands, shook Kim back to her all-business side. _All right. Stay calm. _So _not the dr- _

Kim couldn't even finish the thought - because this _was _the drama. It was _so _the drama.

"Living in the shadows – changing shape but never taking form

Living in the shadows – promised life but never being born

Living in the shadows – covered up but never ever warm"

-David Meece


	10. Last May

**~So here we are. Some short and (hopefully) sweet to tide you guys over. And by that I mean, the next chapter's going to be really long, so it'll probably take me a while to work on. Plus, we're going on vacation next week and I'll want to spend most of my time with my family. **

**At any rate, hope you like and I'll see you next chappie. Whenever that is. :) ~**

**Her**

So mother-daughter bonding had been become mother-daughter _bondage_. Wasn't that the story of her life? Kim Possible thought dryly.

Although Mom's body was cool and smooth and only slightly sweaty against her own, Kim could feel the shaking in it. Mom was about as fearless as anyone Kim knew - and she HAD to be tough to work with all that blood and brain matter for a living - but crime fighting wasn't really her thing.

And she'd only met Drakken a few times before. Right now, Mom was eying him like he was a wounded animal, one she wasn't sure whether to doctor up or put out of its misery. He, of course, was pointedly ignoring her, doing that chief-rooster strut that would have been a lot more effective if his legs weren't so puny. Muttered somethings came out through the perfect dental work.

Kim coughed slightly to redirect his attention back to her. She needed to know exactly what the plan was so she could hurry and foil it and get back to her life, already. She was _so_ going to owe Mom a trip to her favorite Italian restaurant after getting her mixed up in this.

Drakken shot her a surly scowl, a lesser variant of the Tweebs' when they were told not to bring anti-gravity tech to the dinner table. "So," his voice resonated through the cramped train car, "Kim Possible and her -" Drakken glittered a glare at them that stopped short when it landed on Mom. "- sister?" His last syllable took a three-octave hike.

_Uh, yeah. This obvious relative I'm hanging out with on Mother's Day is totally my sister._ For someone who proclaimed himself an evil genius every ten minutes, Dr. Drakken could be a complete dingbat.

Mom jerked her head around enough that Kim could see one side of her lip lifting. "Is he hitting on me?" she hissed - in disgust.

Drakken shook the ponytail. There was absolutely nothing gorchy in his expression, so Kim couldn't even get that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of freaky-looking, oh-my-gosh-you're-such-a-pain Drakken trying to flirt with her just-downright-_good _mother. Actually, she couldn't even begin to picture it. Drakken wasn't a creeper. He was too - too -

Innocent. That was super-weird to say about a villain, especially one who was probably plotting her death even now - but in a twisted way, he sort of was.

Kim gave her head as much of a wag as she could without colliding with Mom's. "Nah." She didn't even need to TRY to scoff; it just came so naturally around Drakken. "Sidekicks just _really _confuse him."

Even more so than she'd thought. At least he could _recognize _Ron. That could work to their advantage, though. Confused Drakken was way easier to defeat.

Shego let out an appreciative snort. Drakken whirled on her with a whose-side-are-you-on look. Reassured that Drakken wasn't coming on to her, Mom's fear was gone, and she surveyed him clinically, as if he were a particularly interesting patient about to go under the knife.

Kim was sure she heard a door creak open on its hinges. The tremulous chill Drakken had worked into his eyes evaporated instantly, and he gasped sharply, which could have been a good sign. Or not, considering they were on the same train. Shego's breathing shifted to one continuous snicker.

With ropes burrowing their prickly strands into her ankles, Kim stretched her neck like putty to find the source of the commotion. A rounded little woman with a bouffant hairdo bigger than she was had arrived on the scene. Her eyes, like little drops of oil behind glasses that had probably been cool several decades ago, were blinking rapidly.

Aww, _no_. This train was supposed to be unmanned. Where had she come from? The woman _did_ seem like she didn't know where she was or how she'd gotten there. Drakken had been pretty much guaranteed no witnesses - and now he had one. What was he going to do?

But Drakken didn't look for a moment like he was about to pitch this woman out the window. In fact, he'd gone from holding his breath to hyperventilating.

The woman put her hands on her floral-clad hips. "Drewbie?" she piped up in a voice so shrill it nearly popped Kim's eardrums.

_Hold up - what?_

The woman shook a finger at Drakken, who was drooping as though Kim had already thoroughly trounced him. Kim didn't know if she'd ever seen shame in the slump of his shoulders before. "Why are these people tied up?" the woman asked.

Drakken didn't appear to be able to respond. With each gentle-yet-firm word out of this woman's mouth, he appeared to shrink farther and farther into himself until he resembled an animal caught in a trap. Not even the arrival of the National Guard had put that kind of nervous tremble around his mouth before.

Who _was_ this lady, and why was Drakken so afraid of her? Granted, Kim knew Drakken was kind of a wimp, but _sheesh_. Even forced into a sit, Mom was taller than the newcomer and totally more formidable. But Drakken was picking at an imaginary hangnail on his gloves and swallowing as if the Possible women weren't even there. What the heck -

Kim didn't expect the woman to answer her, but she did. She tilted the nearly-pink mass of hair. Exactly the way Drakken always cocked his own spikes-and-ponytail hairdo when something had bewildered him for the fourteenth straight time.

Okay, so Kim was a dingbat too.

There was this woman, her hands and feet too small even for a tiny little thing like her. Her face, younger than the age she had to be, was long and oval with a capsule of a chin. Doorknob ears jutted from either side of her head, and her eyes sparkled with Drakken-curiosity over a delicately swirled little nose. And there was Shego, leaning against the wall, flaunting the biggest grin Kim had ever seen on her.

And then there was Drakken himself, who appeared to have recently realized a very urgent need for a restroom. His eyes flicked from face to face, stopping only to swim over Mrs. Cotton Candy Hair and grow soft in a way she hadn't known her arch-foe's eyes could. It wasn't scared-of-Shego soft or bawling-my-eyes-out-over-a-failed scheme soft. There was. . . _love _in it.

That, more so than the woman's nose and ears and hands, told Kim who she had to be. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. And with the sudden sweetness melting Drakken's gaze, they looked so alike it was almost hilarious.

_Uh, we're tied up because he wants to steal whatever government weapon is on this train, and we're here to stop him! _Kim clamped her mouth shut around the words. If this woman was who Kim knew she was, she couldn't break Mrs. Lipsky's heart. Like she'd believe Kim anyway.

Kim twinkled her eyes over to her mother. Mom had a deep-blue sparkle going on, too, and the faintest trace of a smile. _There's a person in there, Kimmie_, Kim could hear her saying - with a giggle.

Yeah, she totally rocked as a mom. Between the two of them, they probably had half a dozen potential escape plans just dying to be used. How many other mothers could do THAT?

The day was as good as saved already.

Drakken's very skin seemed to pucker. It was the longest Kim had ever known him to go without speaking, and when he finally did, the words shook like leaves. "It's - it's part of their therapy, Mother."

A-_ha_.

**Him**

Well, this was a. . . err. . . . precarious situation Dr. Drakken found himself in.

Not that he was about to panic, of course.

On second thought, maybe he was. He had Kim Possible captive, didn't really know what to do with whoever her new sidekick was - where was the boy who always lost his pants? And Mother was wrinkling her brow, usually all smooth for a sixty-year-old, from them to him and back again, inquiring exactly why these people were tied up.

To his immense relief, Kim Possible wasn't saying anything, just smirking him the message, _I wanna see you try to talk your way out of this one._ The woman who obviously wasn't her sister simply seemed relieved that Drakken hadn't been flirting with her - that was what "hitting on" meant, right? Flirting? And why would calling her someone's sister be considered flirting, anyway? Drakken wouldn't have flirted with someone's sister. People got super-protective of their sisters. He would have hated if anybody flirted with _his_ sister. Which he didn't have. Unless you counted Shego. "Sister" was just one of the many, many things she was filed under in Drakken's mind.

Oh, speaking of Shego. She probably wasn't going to be a whole lot of help. Her ordinarily marble-cool face was twitching in mischief. He really should have fired her right there - except without her job security to worry about, she'd tell, she'd tell Mother, she'd tell in a heartbeat.

And then there was his mother giving him love he didn't deserve. For all her hugging and squealing, she was a great mother, and Drakken salivated for her approval. Underneath her softness lay a backbone tough enough to bring up a son all on her own, which couldn't have been easy. Especially not once he hit puberty, and she was having to explain bodily changes she'd never experienced herself.

Surrounded by such strong women, Drakken felt more all-arms than ever. He propped his elbow casually against a random lever, which rocketed up to the top and then snapped off and tinkled to the floor.

Oops. He. . uh. . . heh. . . hoped that wasn't important.

_Okay, think, Drakken, think! _He shoved his fingers through his hair. _What reason could you have to tie someone up besides holding them hostage?_

_"I don't know; I just found them this way"?_

_"We're reenacting the James brothers' Last Great Stagecoach Robbery"?_

_"I was driven to unsound acts when I heard about Brittina and Nicky-Nick breaking up"?_ That last one, at least, was true - he'd doom-rayed a hole in the wall of his suburban lair's living quarters - but Mother probably wouldn't know who those people were. She wasn't off the heezy the way Drakken was.

The walls of logic were crumbling around Drakken, but one fact bled through: _A radio talk show host. You're supposed to be a radio talk show host!_

"It's, uh, it's part of their therapy, Mother," Drakken said. Weakly.

An entire paleontological age passed before anything in the universe responded. Had one of his rival mad scientists slowed down time? Had to be Dementor, eager to see Drakken stew in his misery. . .

Then - "Oh," Mother said. Her eyelids batted a few times, yet she didn't ask further questions.

Yesssss! Still, Drakken had to get her out of here before he inevitably did something else incriminating. A man that evil could only cover it for so long.

The lost art of conversation died a second death on Drakken's tongue, the tongue that villainous monologues rose so easily to. Although suaveness (was that a word?) failed him (the way it always did when it was absolutely required), Drakken began, "Hey, Mother, why don't you see if you can find a -" a flash of genius - "a dining car?" He sparkled what he knew was his dazzling array of teeth at her. "I'm still hungry."

The smile Mother gave him back was knowing but not _too_ knowing. It read, _See, I told you, you need to eat more_, and nothing more.

They'd go round and round in argument about that, too, though it was one of the few things Drakken didn't disagree with her on. He wasn't exactly eating regularly. He always _meant _to - because, gosh, he loved food - but evil plans had a way of sweeping you along until everything else was forgotten. Shego had dropped the how-can-you-scarf-like-that-and-still-be-a-beanpole routine after the third week in a row when she had to remind him to have lunch. Even now, Drakken's stomach was rumbling, though he wasn't sure if that was hunger or nerves.

Mother turned her back - yes, finally! - and toddled out the door, in search of something that could never begin to compare to her potato salad. As soon as her tender padding faded down the hall, suaveness came through for once, and Drakken effortlessly shut the door with one foot. Didn't lose his balance or anything.

Kim Possible was still sniggering from across the car. Sure, she could laugh. She'd probably woken up this morning _knowing_ it was Mother's Day. No doubt she was the perfect daughter, because she was the perfect _everything_! Somebody had to show that girl she wasn't all that, even if she _had_ already spent most of the day with her mother -

Her mother. Drakken's head jerked back toward the older version of Kim Possible. She was continuing to watch him, radiating concern.

It was a look only a mother could give.

But that wasn't what sucked Drakken's breath from his body. It was the familiar. . . ness. Likely there were plenty of tall orangey-redheads in Middleton, but surely none of them had kindness that saturated their very being and leaked out on everyone around them. Drakken's memory banks may have been corrupted, but he never forgot the rare face that had looked at him nicely.

_Ann_.

He'd heard James refer to his wife as "Ann" before, but that was quite a common name! Drakken had never put it together that it was _the_ Ann, his study buddy in the public library during college. The only one who didn't seem to find his scrawny body coupled with his thunderous voice and his nerdy glasses a source of great amusement. He'd never had feelings for her, but he'd asked her to that big dance as friends. And she'd only said no because she had a test that weekend that would make up half her grade. And so he'd had to build robots, and then -

And now he'd have to -

_IGNORE her, Drakken._

It might have been easier to ignore a woman with a zucchini growing out of her nose. Maybe. Drakken worked to bury it all beneath genetics. Scientifically speaking, he should have seen it earlier. The red hair, the big eyes, the illusion of sharpness on a round face. The perkiness. Except Ann would never have run around with her midriff showing. Teens today. . .

Which meant she had grown up to marry James. Drakken wrinkled his nose. She could have done better. Just because he was a rocket scientist and she was a brain surgeon didn't mean -

So Ann _did_ become a brain surgeon after all. She'd wanted that so badly, almost as badly as he'd wanted to become a famous chemist. She'd been such a serious student, too. . .

Drakken's gaze mutinied and flew back to Ann. She was a brain surgeon, all right; you could tell just by looking at her. Her eyes were like scalpels themselves, peeling back Drakken's hair, his scalp, his skull, straight to the most vulnerable part of the brain. Where she could plainly read the thought, _Why couldn't you have made up the test later? It would have saved both of us!_

Tingles marched their way up Drakken's backbone, heralding the onslaught of guilt. If only Ann's face would rip open and spew threats and insults the way James's always did! Then Drakken could have sent her off to her death without a peep from his conscience. But it stayed soft and sad on his. There was mother-fierceness there, a don't-you-dare-hurt-my-daughter, but no hate.

Drakken swallowed hard.

Marching his way up to Kim Possible, he knelt down so he could give her his death stare straight on, deliberately keeping his head turned away from Ann. Time to finish this. "So, Kim Possible," he said, low and slow and menacing.

Kim Possible's eyes began to twinkle mockingly. Drakken had walked smack into a tree branch two hours ago. This hurt more. "Drewbie?" she asked in much too friendly a fashion. That teenage-girl tactic of making you feel like a worm.

"Stop it!" To Drakken's horror, he heard his voice warble into his eighth-grade range. Much as he hated that baby name, it turned into something dirty and wrong in the mouth of his arch-foe.

He jerked back, arms locked around his tightly coiled chest, and regained his villain coldness. If Ann wasn't going to keep her daughter from smarting off to him, then he'd -

Ann had a little pinch between her eyebrows. Just like she always did when she didn't know exactly what to do. Which wasn't often.

Drakken's badly conflicted insides might have burst apart right then if Shego hadn't leaned forward and dropped matter-of-factly in his ear, "Peter Pufferpuff's approaching a _giant_ gorge." With a smile like a sugar packet. Drakken loved sugar, but even _his_ molars could sting after consuming one of those.

He shot his sidekick a laser look. "You're loving this, aren't you?"

Shego nodded shamelessly. The realization that she was being more honest than he was today didn't sit well with Drakken.

Okay - gorge. Unexpected. Not good. Drakken needed to find the container of Syntho-plasma and get his family out of there. Then he could -

Drakken breathed for the first time in minutes. Gorge. He could just let the train go into the gorge and crash. The high-tech shock absorbers he'd spent hours studying should prevent the blow from reaching a car this far back. And if they didn't make it, Drakken didn't have to watch. Once they'd crawled from the wreckage, he'd be long gone with his new doom weapon anyway. But Ann had a chance.

It was the best he could do.

Drakken shook his head, the thoughts roiling like indigestion. He could feel his pupils zipping toward each other, the desperation climbing. There was still Syntho-plasma to be located, and Kim Possible and Mrs. Possible - he should probably call her that if he were going to convince himself they were enemies now - were not going to stop him! Especially not now that he had a time limit.

Let's see, distance divided by speed - max velocity - tornadoes had winds that blew at hundreds of miles per hour - he had a weather machine once - this was getting him nowhere except closer to the gorge. . .

Mrs. Possible's eyes were still sympathetic. Bristled right up the back of his neck and gave him an odd nausea halfway down his esophagus. Drakken turned and flew from the room as if his feet had wings, away from the soft face that he needed to destroy.

Some days it stunk being evil. It really, really did.

**~Note: The name "Drew Lipsky" seemed to be familiar to Mrs. Possible at the end of Attack of the Killer Bebes, so I had that they had been acquaintances before he went evil.~**


	11. This May

**~And here it is at long last! :D Super thanks to everyone who's been waiting, patiently or not.~**

"Killing is not nearly so easy as the innocent suppose."

-Dumbledore

_Rain is still falling, hard, sideways-slanted drops, and it's raining inside him, too. All is sadness and injustice everywhere he turns. He's hurled Shego's name into the air dozens of times, only it never brings her._

_The ego he relies upon in these situations is withered and dead from overwatering. Without it, even more so than with the Diablos disabled, he is defenseless. He feels like the Earth in that one sci-fi novel - like he's lost his core, and now radioactive winds are sweeping across him._

_Nothing seems real. He can feel his heartbeat thundering in his ears, but it's as if it's someone else's, on the other end of a stethoscope. And the shake of his bones is so faraway it could be in another body._

_He's lost his fight, his drive, even his will to escape. When Stoppable appeared before him with vengeance in his eyes, he should have run. But he knew his feet would only hydroplane, and what was the point?_

_All that's left is the anger, wrapping around him and squeezing until it hurts. And even it's a weak imitation of anything that could do him any fury he loosed upon the world was a force to be reckoned with, but it's gone now, abandoning him to despair. Tears pool in his chest, but his eyes remain infuriatingly dry. He wants to cry, he _needs _to cry to get rid of all this pain, but something won't let him._

_How she did escape that broom closet? HOW? Did she have magic powers? A teleporter ray? It wasn't fair, _isn't _fair!_

_He paces the crowded containment room, bellowing noises. This is _not _how it was supposed to happen! According to his calculations - and his calculations haven't been wrong for months and months and months! - he should have won. Kim Possible would be distracted by Eric, the Diablos would bring destruction, and he would have control of the world quicker than you could say "absolute power" - well, as long as you say it rather slowly. Maybe with a Southern drawl. . ._

_Instead, Kim Possible somehow beamed herself through the wall or something, punched a few people, kicked a few things, and - BAM! Right back to the status quo. He's stuck in police custody, a place he had specifically looked forward to never being again, and he's looking at a punishment that'll make his last stint in jail seem like a preschool time-out. Not just looking at it - staring straight into its hollow eyes and seeing nothing but darkness for his future._

_This wasn't any old felony. This was a worldwide assault. One that SHOULD have worked! _

_Maybe if he tells them he has a roast in the oven, they'll let him leave and he can sneak away. He saw that on a cartoon once._

_Come to think of it, _did _he leave the oven on at Bueno Nacho Headquarters? He was planning to bake a celebratory cake to be eaten on his throne. He loved cake - _

_He shakes his head, his neck, his torso, everything right down to his toes. He's growing absent-minded again. The medicine must be wearing off, and it's certain the police aren't going to allow him another dose. When they found the bottle of _prescription _pills that he _needs_, they exchanged significant looks with their eyebrows and confiscated it._

_Of course, the reporters were eating the whole thing up, the little carnivores. They clustered around as he was being led away, asking every question from "How long has he had substance abuse problems?" to "Is it true he went after Ron Stoppable because he's Anti-Semitic?" - he doesn't even know what that _means_. Talking to the police, as if he weren't even there._

_He feels his chin crumple like a wet was so close. _They _were so close. And now there isn't even a "they" anymore. He's been sequestered away from his henchmen and his beloved Shego, and Eric is - _

_No. He can't think it. He breaks into tremors of violent colors._

_Even now, surrounded by police officers who won't take their eyes off him, he's never been more lonely. And there's something else, something that demands he and Shego be together, but he can't recall what. Mental block. It's as though there's a two-ton elephant sitting inside his skull, flattening his brainstem and shorting out his electrical impulses._

_He sits down and hugs his knees up to his chest, trying to pretend they're friendly beings sent to comfort him. The silky swish of the fabric is as cold and foreign as a suit of armor. suit is shiny and spotless, save for a few rain-darkened patches that are already drying, but he's never been clouded in such filth in all his life. He wants his lab coat back._

_His shoes dangle off his feet, leaving his ankles exposed to the chill too intense for late April. He longs for his fancy Italian leather soles, which were whisked away because he got vomit on them and replaced with too-big prison-issue sneakers. Outside, the storm that promised tonight would be perfect rages steady jags of lightning throw him into panicked flashbacks of Diablo Tower, lit up as it shocked Shego._

_And he remembers. It throws him face-first to the ground._

_The merciless kick of Kim Possible's foot. The pile of rubble that resulted. The long, terrible moment when he was certain he'd lost Shego forever._

_Being ushered into the paddy wagon and back out. Shego finally lifting her head enough for him to see something besides her giant flip of hair, now frizzed out from the shock. Something bright red all down her left cheek, smeared like a new paint job some stupid person ran their hand across._

_Blood. Blood! Everything comes out in a scream, one so high-pitched he doesn't recognize it as his. "Shego's hurt!" he cries at the top of his lungs. "Shego was bleeding! You have to let me go check on her!"_

_His mouth stings. For the first time, he's aware that there are cruel splits in his lips, one right atop the other. He's been so panicked over Shego's blood that he almost forgot to keep tabs on his own. She wasn't the only one Kim Possible hurt tonight._

_"What do you think we are, stupid?" one officer asks._

He's _smart enough not to answer. _

_"We're not letting you see her!"_

_Terror in his throat. So chunky he might barf again. Although he can hardly bear to replay the memory, he freeze-frames it and uses the blood flow to estimate the coordinates of the cut. "No, you didn't see!" he shouts. "She was cut right _there _- "_

_He traces with his finger. The approximate location of the wound means nothing to him until his fingertips brush scar tissue. Thick and rough and traumatizing._

_"Now you HAVE to let me go see her!" He rockets from the chair, snatches up a policeman with the last of his strength. "That's a really, really bad place to get cut!" Even as he talks, he's reliving the stickiness down his cheek, the blur swimming before his eyes - _

_He had to get stitches, and Shego was there for him. If she needs them now, _he _has to be there for _her_. She must be scared, she must be so scared, and it frightens him, too._

_He, the great and mighty Dr. Drakken, is frightened. It's amazing how easily it comes back to him after such a long absence. "She needs me!" he finally says. _

_The eyebrow twitch doesn't even bother to be significant this time. "Is this what she needs?" a policeman snorts. "It's clear to me that you need her a lot more than she needs you!"_

_No, that's not how it works. They're family. They need each other. Sobs rattle in his chest, as if his body's voluntarily holding back a much-needed belch. The first time all night he's thought of someone besides himself, and _now _they stop him?_

_"Then YOU check on her!" he spits in the fiercest tone he can muster. Police officers are supposed to protect - protect everyone. Even the criminals. Surely it's part of their job to make certain that Shego isn't going to bleed to death!_

_"Well, we'll - " one cop begins._

_But the biggest, toughest-looking one interrupts. "We got other things to see to, though." The officer squats in front of him and speaks as though his teeth are sealed shut with concrete. "Look, pal, I don't know how much of any of this you comprehend. But people _died _tonight, do you hear me? You _killed _them."_

_That information hits his brain and bounces off. In pure animal fear, he stares at the policeman, and something snaps inside of him. "You go make sure Shego's all right, or I'll kill you, too!" he snarls. His words stab into the opposite wall like swords. _

_That gets results all right. That's when they tranquilize him._

_Through the numbness, he squeezes into a ball and hopes they'll let Shego fix her hair before they take her mug shot. She hates people seeing her with her hair messed up._

_The fuzzy sense of drifting away encroaches on him, but he wrenches away from it. Even after standing gives way to a sprawl on the floor, cheeks squished against the unforgiving tile, his fists pump and his legs churn and he screeches. He's still going to fight, doggone it! He won't stop until he's ruler of the world - until he's okay - _

_And there will be no rest for him until he finds Kim Possible and rips her apart with his bare hands. But he's tired, too tired - just from the tranquilizer, of course - to work up into a lather._

_He saw her, Kim Possible, as he was being loaded into the back of the paddy wagon. Under the sickening triumph, her lips leered with nothing short of hatred. Another blow to the fabric of reality. Kim Possible's eyes can flash at him with annoyance or resentment or even anger, but they're never launched venom his way before._

_It was so ugly, and yet he wasn't able to wipe the identical hate off his own face. Kim Possible doesn't play by the rules, and she's going to get away with it! What's heroic about that? Tonight, she and her little team have managed to ruin his life _and _Shego's. And _end _Eric's._

_Yes, his _life_. There's no argument from even his most disagreeable parts. Just because Eric isn't flesh and blood doesn't mean he isn't alive!_

Wasn't _alive. He feels his chin crumble again._

_This hurts, this hurts, this isn't supposed to hurt. His carefully constructed hardness is eroding. No, erosion is a process that takes years, sometimes thousands of them. This is an avalanche, rushing forward and slamming away everything in its path._

_Even as he declared love a weakness, he loved Eric. And that isn't even close to how deeply he cares about Shego._

_Poor, wounded Shego. He longs to be with her now, so he can make things okay for her and she can make things okay for him. He needs to hear her say with all her dry exasperation that they have nothing to worry about._

_If that makes him weak, so be it! Look where being strong got him! He craves security now, and besides, the police have already watched him cry and throw up. It's not as though he has their respect to lose._

_Irony again. And this time, it most certainly is not on his side. Nothing is._

_Tears blaze in his eyes but won't grant him the relief of spilling themselves over. Of rupturing the film over his vision, loosening the fang-like jabs that turn even blinking painful. The world becomes a giant beehive, complete with buzzing and droning - a beehive he's poked with a stick. And now the insects are coming out, ready to sting._

_It must be millennia later when the youngest police officer he's ever seen opens the door enough to stick his head and shoulders through. His cut-short blond hair and boyish freckles remind him of Stoppable. The thought nauseates him further. _

_Stoppable was the only person he ever wrung a drop of fear from, the only one who trembled at his name. He always played that to the hilt - when you're surrounded by Kim Possibles and Shegos, you take what power you can get._

_Tonight he even lost that. And now he hates Stoppable, too. His foe. His would-be attacker. His. . his. . . _

_Fellow lover of Snowman Hank._

_But surely not even Snowman Hank can save him now. He's crossed over into some menacing place where every light is extinguished._

_The tentative circle Police Kid edges around him appears to confirm that. "Dr. Drakken?" he asks, as if there's even a remote possibility it might be someone else._

_And he just doesn't have the patience for that anymore. The well he drew from for so long has gone abruptly dry. "What do you want?" he snarls. Attempts to wobble in his voice is that of a coward._

_Police Kid takes a wary step backward, searching his eyes for signs of madness. Whatever he finds there makes him swallow hard. "We - we checked on Shego," he reports._

_He tugs on limp threads of what may have once been hope. "Yes, AND?" he demands. The boom and the calm and the cunning are long gone, deserting him once he wasn't winning anymore._

_The child unclenches his hands and holds the palms out toward him, like he's soothing a vicious dog. "She's fine."_

_Just two short syllables, yet they keep the ground from giving way under him._

_"She's absolutely fine," Police Kid continues. "The cut clotted really fast. She's not even going to need stitches."_

_He moans with relief and several other less-good things. Someone cared enough to check! The news is so welcome, he might hug the boy if he were capable of movement any longer. He lowers his heavy eyelashes and grumbles, "Thank you."_

_Kid Cop stares at him, obviously stunned by the fact that megalomaniacs can have manners. He closes his eyes to get away from it all, but the Diablos are waiting for him in the dark, with their nightmare-grins that now seem to have turned on him._

_He's afraid, he's so afraid of the fact that even at his strongest, Kim Possible was able to defeat him with scarcely any effort whatsoever. And of something else, something deeper, something closer._

_His lids snap back open. The young face staring back at him is far less horrifying than watching Eric, loyal to the end, meet that end. He's watched Synthodrones fall before, and it hurt. He was attached to them all to some extent - but none of them had names that froze on his lips, faces he watched drain to death. _

_He never loved one like a son._

_It takes him a thirty-count before he can say, "Um, excuse me? When you investigate the scene of the crime, you're going to find a Synthodrone husk."_

_The kid doesn't ask for a description, but he could name every feature he so carefully molded into Synthoflesh. _

_Six-foot-two - probably shrunk some now that he's melted. Chiseled nose. Charming smile. Brown eyes like chocolate and only slightly lighter hair. He couldn't resist giving the kid a hint of a mullet._

_Shudders course through him. He presses his hand over his mouth to extinguish them, but they pop out as goose bumps on his skin._

_All he gets in return is a blank nod, but he keeps going. "Could you make sure they. . . bury it or something? I just don't want him to be thrown away." His cough, the closest he can get to crying, pops out a few bricks on the solid barrier in his chest. "His name was - Eric."_

_His throat closes around the name. But it's important. It's oh, so, important if Eric is to get a proper burial. He probably wouldn't care because he was dead, but most people wouldn't want "Synthodrone #901" carved on their graves. Especially the majority of the population who aren't, in fact, Synthodrones, who, in fact, most likely don't even know what a Synthodrone is. The ignorant masses might assume some weirdo buried his dead Ipad or Ipod or Ipug or whatever those things are called._

_And really, old Isomethings never really die. They just go into permanent techno-comas. _

_He could really use some medicine right about now. He might have just said all of that out loud. Can't be sure._

_There's only a slimmer-than-dental-floss chance the kid could comprehend even half of that. Still, he shapes his police-hands into understanding walls. "I'll do what I can," he says, in a tone so serious it seems to increase the Earth's gravitational pull, even though there's absolutely no science behind that. Everything else he counted on is being ripped apart and broken, though, so why not?_

_His exhaustion accepts it. He nods and nods and nods and curls over himself, trembling fingers against his rib cage. Eric, only a little over a month old. Already gone. Such a short time to write on a gravestone - _

_Wait._

_Gravestones?_

_The knowledge has been given to him much earlier, but it's like a woolly mammoth encased in ice - ice that slowly melts, revealing the beast beneath. He gives his head a frantic jerk toward the child officer. "Hey," he blares out. _

_That child-face swings back to him. "What?"_

_It feels like a Diablo is swarming his insides, blasting fire everywhere. "Did - did people really die?" he somehow manages to ask. _

_Kid Cop looks stricken. His Adam's apple gives such a jerk, he almost misses the bob of his head. Up and down._

_Yes._

_The pain is so instantaneously searing, he peers down at his stomach to see if it's been knifed. It appears intact, but fluid is building and bulging in places it shouldn't. He lets out a roar and beats his knuckles against his thighs._

That_'s when the sobs surface. After being held prisoner in burning ducts all night, the tears are yanked out with such force he nearly throws up again. Once they start, there's no stopping them, and before long he's gasping for breath and whining between wheezes. The sound is gritty and coarse, like two stone coasters being rubbed together._

_And he has no idea why. He's a mad scientist - he would've handed out death to his enemies a hundred times over if he had his way. What does he care about a few casualties? He planned to be a murderer before the night was over. Why, then, is his skin squirming to get off his body? Why does he feel like _he's_the one whose flesh has been set aflame?_

_Now _everything _seems real. Even behind a haze, he's aware of every cell, throbbing and inconsolable as they were when Carl Thompson used to stuff him in his locker back in high school. _

_For a terrible second, he's no villain, and he doesn't want the world. He just needs a soft shoulder to cry on. But everyone who would be sympathetic is either captured or dead. Even his Sumo Ninja has probably been apprehended by now, charged with attempted kidnapping and excessive bigness._

_Because Kim Possible has foiled the foolproof, vinced the invincible, using completely unfair tactics. She blew in on the wings of the storm and cruelly dismantled the scheme he'd languished over for so long. His greatest plan has simply become his greatest failure._

_On top of that, Eric's gone - wonderful, cunning, took-orders-so-well Eric, and Shego's not even here to stabilize him. His Synthodrone, his proximity to his sidekick, his chance to grab the world when nobody was looking, the self-confidence that had finally been boosted to tyrant proportions - those are the only casualties that count now. Those sting too deeply to weep over, and he's too weary to rage and threaten anymore._

_It's as if all the life in him has been slurped out by a particularly hungry vampire. All he can do is lie on the cold floor and envy the dead._

**()()()()()()**

"In the light of truth, one could clearly see

The facts made the trial mere formality"

-Phillips Craig and Dean

"At least 752 people have been reported dead. Countless others are hospitalized, many in critical condition. This number, however, would be significantly higher if not for the actions of -"

_We know, we know - Kim Possible. _Hoorah for Kim Possible.

Couldn't they just shut up?

Dr. Drakken knew he must have looked terrible. After all, he'd been awake all night, with what felt like invisible tigers clawing at him.

Drakken leaned forward in the stiff chair, soaking the knees of his dress slacks with hand-sweat, as much as he could within the cuffs. Kim Possible had gotten her wish. The world was saved - and he was miserable - and there was no way out of that misery, not for the foreseeable future.

Prison was just as bad as he had remembered, only worse. The food was terrible, made of a fake, sawdusty substance even Dr. Drakken's tolerant palette couldn't choke down. His cell was chilly even in whichever spring month they were currently on and so repressively small as to induce claustrophobia. Definitely not as much room as a mad scientist needed to pace and rant. Too-bright lights that worked and droned and strained to cover the inherent darkness. The orange jumpsuit was unflattering and he had a heck of a time taking it off when he needed to. . . ahem. . . use the restroom.

And, of course, he was still in solitary confinement. The Official Prison People running this place hadn't yet decided whether he would be a danger to his fellow prisoners. As if they wondered, much as Drakken himself did, whether he would go wild and rampage again. Like The Incredible Hulk, but without the ripped pecs to make up for it. Drakken couldn't fairly blame them.

But whoever said life was fair?

The silence was deafening. The only human contact he got was with guards who looked at him like he was the exact opposite of a world ruler. If and when he ever got a cell mate, Drakken hoped it was someone good and talkative. (Actually, he hoped it was Shego, but that was clearly impossible.)

And then there were the psychiatrists that were constantly pouring in! They'd launched questions at him - did he hear voices in his head, did he feel like he had more than one being in his spirit, did he ever see things other people couldn't? There had been numerous ink-blotter tests, which Drakken had never quite understood. What did his ability to make pictures from cow markings have to do with whether or not he was capable of murder? Drakken had answered as honestly as he could, considering his teeth clacked every time he tried to speak and he wasn't at all certain he knew himself anymore.

One psychiatrist had said he had a superiority complex, while another had identified an inferiority complex. Still another claimed he had a "narcissistic distancing from reality which, coupled with the intemperate use of prescription medication, led to calculated but myopic aggression."

Drakken knew every one of those words from psychology class, and he wished he didn't. Basically, he had done it, and at least part of him had meant it. He'd apparently taken far too high a dose of his ADHD medicine, and apparently that counted as "abuse," and apparently it could make you go crazy or something. Yet, deep down in his roiling insides, Drakken knew the medicine hadn't given him anything that wasn't already inside him. It had only compounded it.

The focus may have been artificial, but the evil was all his. Drakken would have been proud of that three weeks before.

Actually, in an off-kilter fashion, he still was. But the bigger they were, the harder they fell. Power and glory - they'd been right within his grasp, so close he could taste them - and what a taste! Sure beat the cold, greasy prison chow currently pressing against the back of his throat.

Drakken had been standing at the pinnacle of success, like the peak of Pride Rock. And then the solid stone had, out of nowhere, given way, and he was left lying or laying or whatever the stupid word was, bruised on the ground. Now he was even back in court, a place he had assured himself he would never be again. Not unless he was appointing himself the judge and jury.

And executioner. Of 752 people.

That bugged Drakken, too, almost as much as the blister his too-roomy shoes were rubbing right on the pressure point of his heel. He would awaken from nightmares with the digits 7-5-2 flashing in his head. He'd pick at his lunch, not eating it, glance down to see he'd arranged the spaghetti noodles in the shape of the number. It was a paltry sum on a planet populated by billions, but it was in the best interest of a despot to keep as many potential servants alive as you could.

That was the only specific amount he'd been given to process since he'd gotten here. The guards didn't like talking to him, wouldn't give him the date or the time or even the temperature. Without that information, Drakken felt like he was trapped in an eternal void.

Drakken tapped his fingertips together, glanced around the room and took in none of it, swung his dangling feet above the floor tiles. Nothing helped. Without the medicine, he couldn't even focus enough to distract himself.

The psychiatrists had taken him off that medicine. They'd warned him that going "cold turkey" might leave him cranky and depressed and so very listless. Life, they'd said, could even seem to no longer be worth living.

Every one of their predictions had come true. At least Drakken supposed they had. He couldn't really see a difference.

The tears welled up in Drakken's chest, and he let them come. He cried stoically, mechanically, numb to everything but the volcano in his midsection. He didn't even care about spoiling his clean-cut image. He'd already sweated the rubber band halfway off his ponytail, and loose hair clung to the back of his neck in frightened shags. Plus he hadn't let them shave him or cut his hair - nobody was coming at _his _face with sharp objects! Not while he already shot awake tangled in the sheets at least once a night.

Drakken squirmed. The psychiatrists had finally declared him fit to stand trial, but they'd had enough evidence that the deaths were unplanned to get the charges talked down to manslaughter, which was apparently a less serious crime.

The word sounded even worse, though. It brought to mind cows crowded into some unsanitary little shack, dumbly unaware of the butcher in the blood-stained apron. Made the people seem cheap and meaningless.

If only they were. Then he would only be facing his usual charges - theft, kidnapping, looking too good while he did both of the above. . .

Drakken couldn't even smile at the thought. The corners of his mouth were weighted down by something heavier than lead. The ugly facts stuck in his head like those splinters you couldn't dig out even with tweezers. When a woman said his name, Drakken went rigid in the chair and whipped around with cramps in every muscle.

Oh. It was just a TV, mounted to the wall so that you had to practically break your neck to see it right-side-up. Three women who looked vaguely familiar sat at a desk, official-looking papers spread out before him. It was one of those news shows where they debated stuff - or one of those debate shows where they announced the news.

It was about him, of course. Everything was about him these days, and it wasn't the boost to the ego Drakken had always anticipated.

"Today, our topic is the Diablo attack." The middle woman's normally calm voice spat out in droplets, meaning this was something she couldn't distance herself from. And she reported on tragedies every day without the slightest hint of emotion.

"Should Dr. Drakken have been charged with murder?" the woman continued. She leveled a stern stare at the camera, intended for Drakken, as though she could see him watching her at this very moment. "Did he have murderous intent?"

_If you find out, _Drakken thought, _will you let me know?_

Of course an attack this grand would have resulted in casualties. Drakken had known that. Hadn't he? If he hadn't, he'd been stupid or. . . what was that other thing Shego always called him? Naive? Still, Drakken couldn't underestimate the clueless state he'd been in when he'd first dreamed up The Plan.

But once the towers were online and the assault had begun - surely, it would have struck him that people were going to die from this. Had he not known? Not cared? Drakken couldn't remember; it had all happened so fast. All he could recall seeing were the Diablos themselves, in all their blazing glory, blasting and overturning and bringing the victory closer to him. Closer and closer and closer. . .

Couldn't someone take these cuffs off just for a _minute_? Let his wrists breathe? Well, wrists weren't connected to lungs, so they couldn't actually breathe, but it still felt to Drakken like he was suffocating through them.

The woman on the left twisted her lips in either sympathy or indigestion. "No, I think manslaughter is the correct charge," she said. "Dr. Drakken didn't know what he was doing." She leaned forward, like she was about to impart a secret - on national television. "I mean, the man is obviously mentally incompetent."

_I am not!_ Drakken wanted to cry. His esophagus must have been flaming red by now. He'd been millimeters away from total world conquest, and people were _still_ casting aspirations on his intelligence? _Really_?

The third woman, the one farthest on the right, pinched her nostrils the way people did when they were trying to avoid some stinky odor. "It is a travesty that Dr. Drakken isn't being charged with murder," she sniffed coldly. "The man was fully aware of what he was doing. He is a cold-blooded killer."

No. He wasn't. Although they hadn't taken his temperature recently, Drakken expected it was holding steady at 98.6. And if she was wrong about that, maybe she was wrong about everything else, too.

Why did he care what some random newscaster thought of him, though? Manslaughter had been the booking, and they couldn't alter the charges now - could they? It occurred to Drakken how very little he knew about the legal system, despite his many arrests.

At any rate, it didn't matter -

"Just look at this footage," Nostril Lady continued.

A recording of what he had once watched so gleefully now swam before Drakken's blurry vision. Of course, they had chosen all the juiciest bits, of Diablos leveling skyscrapers, crushing houses like paper, as earthquake-savvy people huddled in doorways. Others who weren't as good in crises simply churned their legs aimlessly. The human race was reduced to one screaming, mindless mass.

Of which the Diablos had taken 752.

But Drakken's brain was in Mr. Spock mode by this point, and it rejected that statement as illogical. The Diablos hadn't exactly been working on their own. Residing over it all was a monstrous man in a shiny blue business suit. True, the only kill order he'd specifically given them had been for the Possibles, but he'd taught them to destroy indiscriminately.

Drakken squirmed in his seat, the feeling of red ants down his pants intensifying. What was it he'd said all those many months ago? Oh, yes, that the old Drakken wouldn't have been able to pull this off.

Right now, that Drakken suddenly didn't seem like a bad person to be. Because when he watched the helpless people rather than the amazing machines, whoever was in charge of this devastation didn't seem like the mad genius who deserved to rule the world.

He seemed like a big old bully. And there was nothing Drakken despised more than a bully.

The camera, cruel and manipulative, zeroed in on one person in particular - a little Japanese girl, positioned right under the foot of a Diablo. It would have been the perfect time for Drakken to shift his eyes away, but his heart was somewhere near his intestines, as anatomically impossible as that was, leaving him too dizzy to do anything.

Tiny, tiny girl - couldn't have been more than five or six, if that. Black hair done up in two cute, springy pigtails. Her almond-shaped eyes were huge and leaked tears.

The knife that had been plunged into Drakken the night of his defeat twisted. That little girl had never been on his blueprints. Drakken felt frightened - and sad - and something else, something he hadn't felt all year yet.

Remorseful.

And then the camera cut away.

Over it all, the three women droned on about the victims. Who they were, what they'd done. "A grandmother. . . a graduate student. . ."

_Who CARES?_ Drakken wanted to cry. _They could all die - I don't care - but what happened to that little girl?_ If this didn't stop soon, he was going to be graphically illustrating what he'd had for breakfast.

". . . worked full time as a waitress. . . volunteered at an animal shelter. . ."

He'd gotten Commodore Puddles at an animal shelter.

A bluish-gray screen unfolded like a scroll. Cursive letters that read _In memorium_ appeared along the bottom. Wasn't that Latin, the language of scientific classification? Drakken leaned toward it - and that was when the pictures started, square, eight-by-ten-inch photos of posed, living people, like a sick yearbook of the fallen.

Drakken's entire body stung as if he was undergoing acupuncture. The number _752_ blazed in his mind, no longer a meaningless statistic. What was being shown to him wasn't a precise display of digits.

They were people. With names. With faces. With lives. Lives he'd taken with a flick of his wrist.

None of them looked like the little Japanese girl, but they all flashed by so fast, and the faces he did see seemed distorted, twisted like Picassos. Drakken couldn't remember anyone's features, but he knew they would be waiting behind his eyelids for the rest of his life.

It just kept going and going, and for the first time Drakken was aware of just what a big number 752 was. Only the last picture made any impression at all. It was a man. The letters that were probably meant to form his name jumbled in Drakken's brain as they always did when he could smell his own fear, but the photo came through in chilling focus.

Youngish. Brown hair cut close to his head. Wire-rimmed glasses. He looked nice. He looked like in some other universe, he and Drakken could have been friends.

And Drakken wanted him back. He wanted them all back.

What was it like, dying? Drakken's curiosity still reigned, one of the few indications that he hadn't lost his very self. He'd read enough med books to know that there were thousands of ways for a body to break beyond repair, but he'd never seen anyone killed before. Unless you counted Eric.

Nausea. Yes, Eric counted.

Drakken involuntarily replayed Eric's lonely, gruesome death. Had those people looked the same? Limbs turning flaccid, faces hollowing out, gaping holes in their bodies with the life gushing out - only as blood instead of Synthofluid?

Blood. Drakken swallowed a lump that scraped his throat going down. He'd never really been one for blood, unless it was individual cells on microscope slides.

He remembered what it smelled like from the day he'd cut his face, all coppery and salt-watered, how it felt streaming down your face in thick warm rivers. . .

Drakken could almost taste it, and when he started gagging, it took him a second to realize it was on bile, not blood. He slammed a fist into his chest and coughed it back down.

Kim Possible had bled that night. Even with the people he'd truly wanted to kill - her and her father, primarily, with the rest of the Possibles and the buffoonish kid whose name escaped him as secondary casualties, if necessary - Drakken had always imagined himself pressing a button and obliterating them. He had never pictured blood and mangled bodies and all the other messy stuff that he wasn't sure he'd wish even on Kim Possible, much less that nice man whose picture was still being displayed.

He was somebody's kid. Was he also somebody's father? Would some little kid go to bed tonight without a daddy, the way Drakken always had?

That did it. Drakken's neck veins were bulging with the holding-back of vomit, and it wasn't going to work for very much longer. He jumped from his chair and quite literally fell into his assigned guard.

Drakken didn't say a word. He was afraid to open his mouth. He just flailed his hands as much as he could with the handcuffs forcing his wrists to remain parallel to each other.

But the guard understood, or at least he recognized the about-to-puke-my-guts look on Drakken's face. He cupped a restraining hand around Drakken's shoulder and ushered him down the hallway and through the door to the men's room, shoving him into a stall just in time for Drakken to lose what little he'd been able to get down this morning.

It seemed like the choking would never stop. That he really would barf up all his internal organs and die right then and there. Like those nice people on the news. Those nice dead people.

Drakken pressed his sweaty forehead against the cold porcelain and let his kneecaps shake. His entire stomach was upside-down and inside-out, because people had died at his hand. And it wasn't even worth it, because he hadn't taken over the world. . .

A thought assaulted him: _So, if you'd taken over the world - would it have been worth it?_

It shamed Drakken that he was neither good enough nor evil enough to answer that.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight. A briny tear fell through the jut of his lower lip, and his tongue flicked it back to join the acidic returns of breakfast. The little girl's face, too frozen with fear to even open into that ear-piercing screech little girls were so good at, slammed into him like a nightmare. And kept slamming until he had to open his eyes and stare at the blinding lights to burn her away.

Eww. Not a good choice of words.

But why did he _care_? Drakken shifted his backside on the uncomfortably hard floor. He didn't even _like _kids! If he'd ever met the child for longer than two minutes, she would have driven him bonkers. He'd seethe with frustration and probably _want _to fry her.

Still - she was so young. So very young. Her dusty-brown skin had never known anything worse than a paper cut - although those could be pretty horrific themselves. Her eyes were innocent. When he was that age, he would have been traumatized just watching an attack like that on a cartoon show, much less living through it.

Drakken turned so the toilet paper dispenser wouldn't jab into his hip bone and folded his arms over his middle. And rocked back and forth, back and forth, blurring the world further. _It's not like I'm a COMPLETE monster! _His mental spit was desperate. _I don't kill CHILDREN!_

The question came quietly this time, not even needing to accuse, because it spoke for itself. _And how old is Kim Possible again?_

That was good for another round of retches.

Oh, man, he hated to throw up. Something about the contents of your stomach backtracking up your throat to blast out your mouth was worse than unsettling.

Especially when you were essentially alone.

If his mother had been there, she would have cleansed his face with a washcloth and murmured, "There, there, Drewbie." Even Shego would have been holding wet paper towels to his forehead and telling him to stop being a baby, that he would be fine.

The guard just watched, unfeeling as a Synthodrone. (Synthodrones couldn't feel pain - one of Drakken's few comforts.) "You done?" he asked in a monotone.

Drakken's head shook before the movement was even voluntary, since the muscles supporting it were quivering so. He couldn't fathom ever being done. His body was screaming on the inside and bawling on the out. The way the world seemed to twist inside-out when you threw up made it impossible for tears not to fall from your eyes, too.

The heaves had paused for now, but Drakken couldn't figure out what had brought them on in the first place, at least that last bout. Kim Possible was no innocent child caught in the crosshairs. She was his arch-nemesis. She _deserved_ his wrath.

Then why. . . couldn't. . . he. . . just. . . breathe?

Probably because when he looked at his future, all Drakken could see was the cramped confines of a cell. Lawyers were waiting for him outside the bathroom, pressed into spotless suits that actually fit them. Carrying briefcases, no doubt proud that they were the only group in the world for whom "briefcase" wasn't just an expression. They really _did _store their briefs in there. (Their _legal _briefs - not their underwear.)

Demanding answers he didn't have. Getting ready to face those who were seeking justice for the ones he'd killed.

_Killed. Killedkilledkilledkilledkilled. _If he said it enough times, The Law of Repetitive Words predicted that it would smear into nothing at all. Too bad that didn't carry over into the factual world.

Yes. Facts. He needed the facts. Drakken wasn't accustomed to not having all of them, and it made his pores itch like a chemical rash. People had died, and he didn't even know why.

Had they been incinerated? Crushed by falling debris? Laser-blasted through the heart? Stepped on?

_Oh, the possibilities are endless. You made sure of that._

Drakken glanced down at his hands, scarcely able to believe those tiny, trembling things had taken 752 lives. For the first time in years, his doubt outmatched his thirst to get that kind of power back.

Could he have done something different? _Any_thing? Made the Diablos a foot shorter, a notch slower, their fire ten degrees cooler? Then they might have lived, and Drakken's cell might not have been a maximum-security-lockdown type, and he wouldn't have a little Japanese girl permanently carved into the right hemisphere of his brain.

The realization hit Drakken like a fist. No. He couldn't have. He'd had no idea which Diablo would be the one to wind up at Kim Possible's house. So he'd had to make them all equally deadly.

Drakken hitched against the stall door, its merciless steel pressing against shoulders that felt so fragile without their padding. Had the lethal possibilities truly been on his radar screen? Or had they snuck in under it and corrupted him from the inside? He struggled to recall whether any mental warning bells had gone off when Shego had sliced bloody slashes into Kim Possible's arm.

He had known from that moment that he had to win, because losing would bring punishment he wouldn't be able to bear. It was the first time he'd ever watched someone bleed at his orders, and it was like being drunk, a giddy on-top-of-the-world sensation that slowly morphed into the sickest feeling he'd ever had. Drakken had dreamed for years of the day he'd finish off Kim Possible, but it always involved pushing a button and having her vaporized or being lowered to her doom somewhere out of his sight, so he'd come back and find her gone - not lying there dead, but _gone_, like she'd never existed. He hadn't thought - hadn't _let _himself think - of the gory agony of death.

Drakken squeezed his eyes shut tight. _Please, _he begged just in case there was something up there and it was willing to listen to a killer, _let it have been quick._

It was the only kindness Drakken could offer. Because he couldn't undo it, and he wasn't sure he would even if he could. Not when he flashed back to how satisfying it had been to watch those buildings fall.

Yes, he'd meant for there to be damage and destruction and maybe, yes, maybe, people were supposed to die. But they weren't supposed to be fathers and sons and animal-shelter workers. They should have been more like insects that Drakken happened to tread on en route to his throne.

Insects didn't have pigtails.

This was ridiculous. He needed to get a grip.

Drakken rose shakily to his feet. The ground throbbed under him. His legs felt about as solid as what he'd just thrown up. "I'm ready," he told the guard. It was the biggest lie he'd ever told - and he'd come up with some whoppers in his time.

The guard gave him a look that could have sucked the juice right out of a lemon. Drakken mustered enough iciness to freeze everything except his eyebrow. Its crumple must have been a dead giveaway.

He stopped at the sink to rinse away the taste and wipe the evidence from his chin. A certain dirtiness, however, clung to his gullet. As the guard escorted him from the bathroom, several drawers were popping open in Drakken's mind, raining confetti that had once been thoughts.

The guard led him around the white, looming, lawful pillars, very possibly the last non-cinderblock walls Drakken would ever see. The kid in him ached to run his hands up and down their smooth columns, receive some cool relief, but he was cuffed.

Drakken sank back down into the same chair, eyes burning with every blink. He rested his rubbed-raw wrists against his slacks and squinted up at the TV. Sheesh, how much footage did they _have_ of this one stupid attack?

Like before, the Diablos were reducing architecture to wreckage. Like before, people shrieked and ran for their lives. Very much _not _like before, the sight was revolting.

How many of the people in this footage were lying cold and stiff now? The destruction he had wrought was glorious, but Drakken didn't want to watch them die. That had never been his forte (which was also Latin, for - for - for, well, something or other). Even as a child, he'd buried his face in his theater seat when someone onscreen was about to get killed. If they were really bad guys, he'd have been glad they were dead, but he'd never relished the grisly details the way Eddy had.

But Eddy wasn't the one standing trial for manslaughter now, was he?

Tightness overtook him. _Slaughter _had such a barbaric sound to it. Drakken had no problem with "barbaric" when the situation called for it, but "ruthless" was as far as he was willing to go with innocents.

He guessed. He'd never really thought about it before.

And he wished he wasn't thinking about it now. Drakken jerked his head toward the set of official double doors, beckoning from about a mile away. What were the odds that he could stun a guard with a head-butt to the stomach, the way Kim Possible always did to his henchmen, and make a break for it?

Drakken tapped his fingertips together as best he could. No way could outrun the police, or his own unfamiliar guilt. But what was left of his sanity was quickly vanishing, and he was tensing himself toward the nearest emergency exit -

A variation of light Drakken hadn't seen before flashed from the TV then. He swiveled toward it by instinct, the blueprints of his escape plan already tearing up and blowing away. His wonderful, abominable Diablos jittered as if having seizures, their D-crowns folding back into tiny horns, their bodies shrinking. Even as the lightning split the sky, they fell to the ground in barely-audible clunks, harmless toys once more.

Drakken made a face. This was the moment he'd lost everything, and the rest of the world heralding it as their salvation was something he wanted to watch even less.

Except that as one Diablo bounced off the pavement, a pair of arms still plump with baby fat scooped it up. Two rounded cheeks, the color of sand under the moon, nuzzled against its ghoulish grinning teeth. Even the girl's twin pigtails seemed to be bobbing happily, as though the whole attack had never taken place.

It was her. And she'd survived the monsters.

Drakken sagged right down the middle, the pain alleviated for an instant. _She's all right. I -I didn't kill that little girl._

That was the only thing that got him to inhale jaggedly and stagger into the courtroom. The mahogany door swung wide, creaking like something out of a horror movie, and his endless array of enemies glared at him as one.

Drakken couldn't feel the floor beneath his feet as they somehow carried him forward. Every condemning slur they shot into him with their eyes was true, and he was powerless to declare it otherwise. He tried to think of anyone in the world who wouldn't hate him right now. And he came up empty.

He had blood on his hands.

**()()()()()**

He had blood on his hands. And Kim Possible was going to make sure he PAID for it.

The loss of life weighed on Kim like a bad dream you couldn't wake up from, even hunching her shoulders as she let the massive courthouse door slip shut behind her. Sure, people had died in spite of her on some of her earlier missions. But those had been natural disasters - tornadoes, floods - forces of nature that didn't have some evil agenda. This was the first time a villain had launched an attack and there had been people Kim hadn't been able to save.

People she'd failed. People _he'd_ killed.

In a way, the mad scientist _had _won, even though he was behind bars right now. Each stopped heart was a victory for Drakken. Kim put her hand to her mouth. He probably had the exact number memorized.

Kim had to stop right there in the hall and squeeze her eyes shut for an instant, something she didn't remember ever needing to do before Diablo Night. If only she hadn't been so wrapped up in Eric. If only she'd taken that call from Wade. If only she'd started investigating as soon as Nakasumi had claimed the Diablo design was his. . .

Now she understood what Ron meant about her "Kimness." Everything that made her Kim wouldn't stop chewing her out.

Because Dr. Drakken was a monster. And Kim, who was usually so good at spotting a monster when she saw one, hadn't seen that about him in time.

And then there was the whole Eric thing. Yeah, Kim had to keep her brain pretty busy to keep it from flying into emotions she had always been able to control before. You didn't just meet the perfect boy, get betrayed by him, find out he was a robot-type thing, and then watch him die without at least WANTING to have a good sob-fest. Eric had been as much of a scumbag as Drakken - but Kim had stared at those perfect lips for so long, imagining what it would have been like to kiss them. So to see them go waxy and melt -

Kim forced her eyes open. Time to change the subject.

All the news channels and papers - both the reliables and the tabloids - were blaming Drakken's sudden craziness on everything from his being raised in a single-parent family to the prescription meds the police had apparently found on him the night of his arrest. Kim, however, knew that was a load of trash not even worthy to be a Smarty Mart off-brand.

In the first place, lots of kids came from those kinds of families, and they turned out just fine. Take Felix. Drakken himself wasn't even buying _that_ explanation. He'd made sure to tell the papers, "Do _not _blame my mother! None of this was her fault! She did everything she could!"

As for the second one - Kim broke into a semi-run in high heels toward the counsel door - she wasn't even sure whether or not to believe it, especially since a couple of guys had dished to the tabloids that Drakken had gotten snot-faced drunk at a villain party last year. Nothing hideous about Drakken would surprise her anymore, but Kim had recognized the tough-hard bodies packed into gray jumpsuits as Professor Dementor's henchmen and decided to take their story with your recommended daily amount of salt. A raise had probably been offered to whoever could come up with the best way to make Drakken look even worse.

Drakken had refused to comment on that one, which unnerved Kim more than anything else about this whole sitch. Since when did Drakken "refuse to comment"?

Then again, Drakken had pretty much undergone a whack metamorphosis in the last few months. And everyone around him had gotten pulled into the warp.

Including Kim herself.

Kim's fingers shook with contempt on the doorknob. She didn't just hate Drakken and Shego for what they'd done to her. She hated them for what they'd turned her into. It was scary how good it had felt to punch Drakken square in the mouth and kick Shego's writhing form into that tower. She'd wanted to, and heaven knew they were asking for it. But she didn't _need_ to, and Kim had never used unnecessary force before. She didn't care about Drakken's boo-boos or Shego 10-kilovolt wake-up call; she cared that it had been totally unprofessional of her.

She didn't just go around beating people up because they hurt her feelings. She was a crime-fighter, not a petty little teen girl with a vendetta. Not what Drakken had pegged her as.

And she'd felt so superior back in January when Team Impossible had needlessly punched out Drakken, so smug as she'd vowed never to be like them. And now Kim _was _like them. Or at least she had been, briefly. It had probably been a one-time thing, but it had kept Kim on her toes in areas she had always strolled through with complete confidence.

After all, Shego had once been a hero, too. Was that how she first developed a taste for blood, beating up her foes when they so completely deserved it?

The thought of being ANYthing like that sadistic little witch - or her boss - was enough to fence in Kim's desire to smash their faces in. Drakken may not possess a soul anywhere in that tangled mess of a body, but Kim still did. Deadening it with revenge would be his final win.

Kim composed her expression and opened the door. Ron greeted her with the new grin reserved for her: all the old best-friend warmth, mixed with adoration for a crush but without the I-gotta-be-cool strain. Kim couldn't help but return it - because it was the exact same thing she could feel wrapping itself around her heart.

The prosecutor sitting across from Ron looked up at Kim over his half-glasses. "Good morning, Miss Possible. Please take a seat."

Kim did, careful not to show too much thigh as she crossed her legs in the prim-and-proper skirt she'd bought just for the trial. Maybe Mom was right and she should have gotten a longer one, but she hadn't wanted to give off _too _much of a little-old-lady vibe.

"Let me tell you what we can reasonably expect to happen today," the prosecutor said.

_You mean, besides Drakken going down?_

She hadn't even realized she'd said it out loud until Ron had plunked his hand on her shoulder and given it his first boyfriend-squeeze. Kim wrapped her own fingers around his and absorbed his sweat with her own. Even now, he could remind her how to smile.

Maybe going to the prom with Ron had been on impulse, bolstered by knowing that _he _would never betray her. Every time she'd seen him since then, though, Kim was reminded of something old and familiar turned new and exciting. All the times Ron had risked his life for her. His goofy smile. The heart he left wide-open. What Nakasumi had called his "childlike wonder." Things Kim had always loved about Ron that she was falling _in _love with now. Now she wondered why she'd ever wanted a guy who wasn't giggly and gangly.

The prosecutor blinked. "I'm not sure 'going down' is the term I would use. But, yes, we are quite convinced that we have enough evidence to entail Dr. Drakken's immediate incarceration."

Kim silently resolved to work on her vocabulary. All slang pushed to the farthest corners of her brain.

"There has been ample proof that Dr. Drakken was unaware of the deaths he would come to cause that the charges have been talked down to manslaughter, not murder."

The memory of her dad's gentle hands clinging to the sides of a giant tank for dear life tore through Kim. The prosecutor's calm, studious, never-gotten-mad-about-anything-in-my-life manner suddenly tweaked her in a major way. "You've got him on _attempted _murder, though - right?" Kim demanded, more harshly than she'd intended to.

The prosecutor ran his hand over gray hair that had probably thinned since the night of Drakken's arrest. "Indeed, Miss Possible. Several counts of, in fact." He leaned across the table and patted Kim's hand as if he were her grandfather. "There is no doubt that Dr. Drakken is going to get life in prison. The only question is whether or not there will ever be the possibility of parole." The palm turned up, the fingers spread. "All this means is that the death penalty has been taken off the table."

Kim sucked in a breath and held it. She hadn't known it had been ON the table. The thought of Drakken dead didn't make her sad, but it did disturb her. He probably deserved it - but what good would it have done? It wouldn't bring those people back. It would have just been one more death.

The prosecutor went on, and somehow Kim managed to keep from vaulting out of her seat when he informed them that Shego had agreed to testify against Drakken in exchange for a lesser sentence. Kim had been involved in enough court cases to know it was a pretty common practice - especially where a beautiful, twenty-something woman like Shego was concerned - but it was WAY too many shades of wrong here.

Somehow Shego always found a way to come out on top. Just because Drakken had turned out to be a monster too didn't make her any less of one.

Most of the rest of the advice consisted of looking their questioners in the eye, answering respectfully, and speaking above a mumble - which was _so _not going to be a problem for Kim. She was more worried about yelling Drakken right out of the courtroom. Kim locked her knees together under the table and fought to find her usual control.

"Tell the truth, of course," was the last tip the prosecutor gave them. "Don't worry if you don't remember everything - most people don't, especially about an event this traumatic. But - and this is very important - if you can't recall something, admit that. Under no circumstances should you make up anything. Even the tiniest bit of perjury is taken very seriously in these courts, even by minors."

He directed that toward Ron, whose memory had a track record of "creatively" filling in the gaps. Ron nodded with a solemnity he must have kept hidden away somewhere, and all at once he seemed mature - well, mature enough that Kim discarded the image of Drakken's lawyers wondering why they'd brought an eight-year-old in to testify.

If the air was heavy in the counsel room, though, it was nothing compared to the atmosphere in the actual courtroom - a stern, echoing space that hushed even Ron to a respectful "Ah." Kim's legs squared with determination, and she felt, once again, like she could do anything. As long as Ron was with her.

It came to Kim that she'd been thinking of them as partners, not hero-and-sidekick, for the past few weeks. How could you rank your best-friend-boyfriend (or "BF squared," as Monique had taken to calling Ron) lower than yourself and expect it to work?

Yeah, even getting over the AI hottie was doable with someone like Ron around.

Kim sank into one of the witness chairs, folded her hands in her lap, and let her eyes roam around the room. The first pair that met hers could have passed for a panther's.

Shego. In a skirt that was trying way too hard to be respectable, she looked pale and harmless - except for the way she was holding her wiry frame, getting ready to slip through everyone's fingers.

The bitter rise in Kim's throat clenched her smooth grip into sweaty fists. She was able to keep her court face on, but she couldn't get away from the fact that she would rather duke it out with Shego than have to put up with her across-the-room smirk for the entire trial.

Kim waited for Shego to blink before she jerked her gaze away. Her parents beamed at her from an audience mostly made up of strangers. Monique sat next to them, chin raised in the air, supporting Kim with a look that clearly said, "You go get that jerk."

Ron slammed into the chair next to her and began concentrating on not letting his leg bounce against the floor. The effort to play it cool was all over him. Kim could have kissed him for it.

She had just gotten herself straightened and poised and polished when the doors at the rear of the courtroom gave a creak straight out of a horror movie. What they were bringing in could have been the creature eating everyone.

Kim had always thought of Shego as the dangerous one. But, while she hadn't been any less dangerous on Diablo Night, she'd been nearly blotted out by Drakken. Drakken, suddenly cunning and deceptive. Drakken, larger than life with his shiny silk suit and twisted smile.

Drakken, who'd deliberately broken her heart - and tried to kill her family - and taken lives around the world that weren't his to take -

Kim felt the heat of her hate scorching her own eyeballs as she aimed it at Drakken. She twisted in her seat to give him the you-are-the-most-vile-man-on-the-planet glare that showed up whenever she even _thought _about the little psychopath.

And then it slipped away, dropping her mouth open, when Kim saw the waif of a figure being hustled into the room.

The Drakken she knew had been lean and lanky, neither particularly big or especially small. This man - _scrawny _was the first word that came to mind, followed by _stooped_. He looked like he'd shrunk six inches since the night of the Diablo attacks, though Kim guessed that could have been the effect of being flanked by a hulking guard on either side.

But he'd definitely lost weight. The childishly plump cheeks looked almost hollow now. His wrists were so thin, Kim wondered how the handcuffs that clamped them together didn't slide right off. The automatic wave of pity disappeared in her disgust with the little blue freak.

Drakken's lawyers, who must've known how badly the odds were stacked against him, were obviously trying for a clean-cut look and had somehow gotten him into a starched Oxford shirt and crisply-pressed dress pants. It might have worked if they hadn't been hanging on him like they were on a coat rack. And if they had shaved him. Dark fuzz grew in sparse, lopsided patches on his cheeks and chin.

And, of course, no one had been able to talk him into cutting that awful shaggy ponytail. It was greasy and matted, and it hung limply, instead of sweeping into its usual upward curl. He looked about as clean-cut as a punk rocker.

But it was Drakken's eyes that drew Kim's attention. They were so melancholy, they looked like they might ooze right out of their sockets.

As if he were the only one suffering. As if he HADN'T brought all of this on himself.

Or - as if he knew showing remorse might soften the judge's heart.

Kim's instincts stiffened her into a karate-chop-ready pose. Well, maybe Drakken could _show _remorse, but he'd proven he couldn't _feel _it. He was faking it. She'd never known Drakken to be a good faker - until prom. He'd become one honkin' unpleasant surprise that night.

They escorted Drakken past Kim, and she recoiled from his closeness. At this distance, it was hard to believe he couldn't still be a threat. Or that she wouldn't break her own vow and clobber him again.

Kim's lip was already curling at the corners before she even got a whiff of him. When she did, she almost choked. The Drakken she'd known - or _thought _she'd known - smelled like chemicals and chocolate. What her nose was picking up now was sweat - the man-kind strong enough to gag you - and vomit.

For the first time, Kim's guard slipped. _You can't exactly fake that._

Sure you could. Finger down the throat, anyone? Kim had it on good authority that Bonnie Rockwaller had done that _at least_ once back in middle school to get out of taking a history test.

That idea lasted of all of, like, a second before Kim shook her head. No, Drakken was too much of a baby to make himself throw up. This was genuine.

All right, but puking didn't equal remorse. It was probably fear. _Yeah, if _I _were facing a life sentence, _I_'d be throwing up, too._ It could have even been the stomach flu. Drakken always blubbered over his illnesses as though they were the greatest tragedies the world had ever known. The thought soured _Kim_'s stomach.

She turned to treat Ron to a major eye-roll and found herself facing a look she'd only seen on him once before - when he'd taken down a trying-to-escape Drakken on Diablo Night. Tight jaw. Narrowed eyes. Unusual anger.

His rush to defend her was kind of wowza, but that hate didn't look right shadowing Ron's freckles. Not with the whole "childlike wonder" thing. Ron had almost as much right to hate Drakken as Kim did, but the loathing roaring in her veins wasn't something Kim wanted a sweet guy like Ron to feel.

Kim slipped her hand into Ron's and gave it a squeeze - up a notch in tenderness from last month. "We're totally going to Bueno Nacho to celebrate after this, right?" she whispered in his ear, just to get him grinning again. When he did, warmth spread through Kim's chest.

Way different from the heat that she could feel someone bringing down on her head. Kim panned the courtroom and met the panther-glare.

Shego's plasma was restrained by her special cuffs, but there was an equally-deadly fire in her eyes. _I hate you, too,_ smoldered in there, and Kim abruptly understood how Shego had gotten so hard so young. It was what happened when you trained yourself to be tough, to fight, to defend yourself - and then everything that gave you your standards was taken away.

Their eyes bit at each other, green for green, until the plaintiff droned, "All rise for the Honorable Judge Mantle." As Kim straightened up, she found herself missing the days when Shego got under her skin primarily by dissing her fashion sense.

The judge walked importantly up to his bench, parting the people like a flock of sheep. As he said, "Be seated," Kim glanced back over her shoulder at Drakken. He'd taken a haphazard seat, sprawling forward with his fingers dangling practically to his toes - until one of his lawyers gave him a nudge and a hiss. Drakken retorted with a scowl that sputtered and died, but he ironed himself out and took to palming his thighs over and over again.

Kim could see the pressure point throbbing in his temple, and she drilled her eyes right into it. _Look at me! _some out-there part of herself wanted to cry. _Let me show you how much I want to spit in your face!_

Even Drakken, oblivious as he was to everything that wasn't himself, picked up on the venom being thrown his way. He swiveled in his chair and let his face drift to Kim's.

Drakken's own face was nearly unrecognizable, and Kim knew why. For the first time in months, there was no arrogance in his expression. There wasn't anything - except despair. The power he'd had that night had been leeched out of him, the way the color had from his nearing-translucence skin.

And Kim vowed with her muscles burning that he would never get that power back.

The pounding of the gavel snapped her attention back to the judge. "Case Number 3692. People vs. Dr. Drakken."

That was clearly the prosecutor's cue. He planted himself square in front of the table where Drakken and his lawyers were sitting and, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we ask that you find Dr. Drakken guilty of all charges against him. He is a menace to society!" The words came out in a Dad-like, I'm-not-forcing-you-but-I-strongly-suggest-it command.

Drakken slid down again. He still wasn't showing any signs of the mad-angry OR the mad-crazy. Just that whole nobody-likes-me-everybody-hates-me-guess-I'll-go-eat-some-worms thing. Even as Kim watched, he dragged a shaky hand under his nose.

Man. Could he _lay _it on a little thicker?

"Your Honor," the prosecutor began, "I call Mr. Ron Stoppable to the stand."

Ron flipped toward Kim with round eyes and a rounder mouth. Kim held back a cringe. Calling _Ron _first? That could be a mega-backfire.

Or - maybe not. Time to have a little faith in her man.

"You can do it, Ron," Kim whispered to him.

He gave her the head-bob and loped his way up to the witness stand. Kim didn't need to see his knobby knees to know they shook like nobody's business.

Ron laid a hand on the Bible as the prosecutor solemnly asked, "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, to the best of your ability, so help you God?"

"Dude," Ron said with equal seriousness, "I totally do."

It was probably the first time in years the man had smiled.

Ron answered with his name and his relationship to the defendant, which he gave as "arch-foe" - and Drakken didn't protest. He just sat there like a broken twig.

"Mr. Stoppable, did you or did you not phone Bueno Nacho Headquarters at 9:23 [?] Central Standard Time the night of the attack?"

Nod, nod, nod. "Yeah."

"And what was the nature of this call?"

"Um - nature? I - uh - I wanted to complain because they discontinued the bendy straws."

The man sitting behind Kim snickered. She whirled around and dug her eyes into him until he quit. Even Ron said he was creeped out when she did that.

"And the defendant was the one who answered the phone, correct?"

"Oh, yeah. That was him. I would know his voice anywhere." Ron drove his pinkie fingers into the wood, but he appeared surprisingly steady.

"Did he identify himself as Dr. Drakken?"

"Well. . . I dunno," Ron said, shoulders folding to his ears. "I called him Dr. Drakken, and he said yes, so that's identifying - right?" Puberty got the better of him and shot his voice to the ceiling.

This time Kim _did _cringe. And he'd had it so under control in all their practices.

"I believe that counts, yes," the prosecutor replied, somehow straight-faced. "What else did he say after you confronted him?"

Ron's cheeks scrunched, preparing to relive his nightmare come true. Kim wished she could have been up on the stand with her arm around him. "Um - that he had big plans, and we'd all see what he was up to. You know, soon enough and all that bad-guy stuff."

"I see," said the prosecutor. "And is it true that he then threatened you with the Diablos even before they had turned into superweapons?"

Kim watched Ron's Adam's apple bob. "Yeah - "

_Come on, Ron. I know you can do it._

" - yeah, he had a bunch of 'em chase me. They were still only, like, two inches tall, but they had these little pincher claws that looked like they could really hurt!" Ron almost lapsed into a whine. Luckily, Snicker Man remained silent.

"Where did you go?"

"I ran straight to school - Middleton High - " Ron corrected himself. "Where the prom was bein' held, and I told Kim that the Diablos were evil."

Kim closed her eyes. They were getting to the part that might unravel her in a way she'd never come apart before.

"Did she believe you?"

"Not entirely." Kim heard Ron swallow. "But she was nice enough that she wanted to show me there was nothin' to be afraid of, so she took me home and went to research the Diablos. She's great, Kim - "

Kim's eyes opened, and she discovered a smile on her lips. Man, she loved this guy. It could almost make her forget how much she hated Drakken.

The prosecutor nodded, as if he were well acquainted with Kim and her niceness. "And that is where you were attacked, correct? The Possible house?"

"Y-y-yep." Ron shoved a hand into his pocket, seeking support from Rufus, Kim knew. "We were all sittin' around the table - "

"Who is 'we'?" the prosecutor interrupted.

Ron ticked off each person on a finger. "Me. Kim. Mr. Dr. P. Mrs. Dr. P. Jim. Tim. Rufus. And Wade on the Kimmunicator."

The prosecutor nodded again. His friends at Global Justice had probably told him what the Kimmunicator was and how important the mole rat was.

"So we were all watching these things," Ron continued, "an' then -" His tongue seemed to stick, and he loosened it with a lick. " - then they suddenly grew up real tall and turned evil-looking and got blaster arms instead of pinchers."

"I see." The prosecutor's glasses teetered on the bridge of his nose. "Did they come immediately for you and your friends?"

"Oh, yeah." Ron's head almost bobbed off his toothpick neck. "It was really scary. We thought we were gonna die."

His kid-face crumpled. Every woman on the jury looked ready to lynch Drakken right there.

And if they did, Kim wasn't sure she'd be able to resist volunteering to join them. Ron's honest fear had ripped her principles wide open.

Kim swiveled to Drakken, fully prepared to slap away the cocky sneer. But it wasn't there.

Drakken stared straight ahead, a glassy stare that couldn't have been taking in more than half the scene. His eyes were blank, but not in the soulless way they had been on Diablo night. They were simply _gone_, like he'd transported himself to another world because he would break down the middle if he stayed in this one. Even from here, Kim could see that they were laced with painful-looking red strings.

Kim's vengeful side felt pure raw delight. It was like acid taking over all her senses, but she longed to see Drakken break down. She wanted to see him cry, hear him scream, know that he was as frightened for his life as Ron had been. As _she_ had been, as everybody on the whole stinkin' face of the Earth -

And then the glass cleared just long enough for Drakken to look - miserably - right into Kim's eyes. The bags beneath pulled down, making the red as forlorn as a bloodhound puppy's. His eyes were open and expressive again, but Kim was sure she was reading them wrong.

_Don't hate me. Oh, please, I can't stand you hating me, _could NOT be the message Drakken was trying to send.

Why in the _world _would she not hate him? More importantly, what reason could Drakken possibly have for _wanting _her not to hate him?

Kim shook her hair back and flipped away from him. No. It was just one last trick, and she wasn't gonna fall for it.

**()()()()()()**

As soon as Drakken had stepped into the courtroom, he had developed an acute case of the bends that must have splintered his bones. And when the prosecutor stepped back and said, "I call Miss Shego to the stand," Drakken was sure the bubbles in his blood would explode and mortally wound him.

_That isn't her real name! _Drakken wanted to bellow. Except he didn't know that for sure, couldn't prove it scientifically. He just knew it would have been a really weird thing to name your kid - but then, so was "Drew Theodore P. Lipsky."

A man in a starched suit rose and helped Shego to her feet. What had he done to Shego to get her to do this? Threatened her? Bribed her? Mind-controlled her? The thought of anyone except him mind-controlling Shego sent rage pumping through him. He wanted to lunge at this person and -

And what? Add another face to the in-memoriam montages on the news?

Drakken clapped a hand over his mouth and shot a glance back over his shoulder, anxious to distract himself. For once, he was grateful for the lack of medication.

The Stoppable boy had descended from the stand, and Kim Possible had her arms around him, rubbing his back in a way that could have only been described as lovingly. Drakken felt his lip curl. Had she been so desperate for a prom date that she'd chosen the _buffoon_?

Shouldn't she have been brokenhearted over Eric, even a little bit? The fact that Kim Possible didn't show so much as a a single wet eyelash had indignant prickles going up and down Drakken's spinal column.

Of course. Innocent people had been killed, and she had come through completely unscarred. Unscathed. Un-everything. And _she_ was the one Drakken had wanted to kill in the first place! At least if she were dead, she wouldn't be hating him all over her face. Her eyes were cold and sharp, like the icicles in his stomach. Drakken couldn't figure out how to get them back to normal.

What could he say? "It was you I was trying to destroy, not them! Honest!"?

Somehow, Drakken suspected not even Kim Possible was disgustingly selfless enough to accept that.

He pulled his focus back to Shego, who was sashaying - there really was no other word for it - up to the witness stand, skirt swishing against her legs. It was a nice skirt. Not long enough to drape the floor, but not short enough to. . . err . . . attract the wrong kind of attention.

Blushing, Drakken did a survey of every male eye in the room to ensure they weren't checking Shego out. Because he _would_ have killed them for _that_.

As Shego took the oath, Drakken wondered if prison was as horrific for her as it was for him. It didn't seem like it. The liquid voice she used betrayed no stress. But, then, that was Shego for you. _Her _eyes would never reveal weakness through their blood vessels even if she'd gone weeks without sleep.

And the child officer was right - her face had healed up nicely. Couldn't ever tell there was a scratch on it. She wasn't even going to have a scar. Which he wouldn't have minded so much, because then they could have been Scar Buddies.

He hoped she was okay, because he didn't have the strength to protect her. Even at his strongest, he'd only been able to watch helplessly as she was nearly shocked right out of his life.

Memories of that went through Drakken's body the way the current must have gone through Shego's. He strained for numbness, for apathy, for any part of him that was still hardened. Yet even through the haze, reality didn't budge. Every detail - the harsh lights, the jury box's knotted panels of wood, the media mongers lurking in the corners with truly enormous cameras - seemed accusingly real.

They were facts, and a true scientist never argued with the facts.

"State your relationship to the defendant," the prosecutor said to Shego. They'd obviously let her brush her hair this time at least. It hung all wavy and perfect around her face, so that she looked like the Mona Lisa. Except without a smile. Without any smile at all.

Shego didn't so much as sneer. "Employee." Something about the arch of her neck made Drakken want to spring from his seat and correct her with "Sidekick!", though he knew he couldn't trust his knees not to give way under him.

The judge nodded toward her. At least, Drakken thought he did. Everything was a blur. All he could tell was that the judge looked old, and that was not good. It was one of the postulates Drakken had gathered from his many experiences in court - the older the judge was, the grumpier he'd be. Or was that the older _you _were?

Drakken scratched at his lopsided stubble and wished he _had_ shaved that morning. Maybe he could have milked the kid-face he so resented.

But he wasn't sure that face was so little-boyish anymore. Drakken felt the weight of 752 lost lives on him, draining him of what remained of his youth. And he fought not to bawl.

"Miss Shego," the prosecutor began, "you were the one sent to kidnap Nakasumi from his parade the night of March 31st, correct?"

Shego answered him with a polite nod Drakken didn't know was within her capacity. "Yes, sir."

"And Kim Possible stopped you then, yes?"

"Yes, sir. She came after me in my jet, so I paged Drakken and asked for his advice." The formal words were so un-Shego, Drakken was sure he was hallucinating.

"And what did he advise?"

Shego leveled her gaze at the audience, and Drakken sucked in his breath. She had icicle eyes, too. "He told me to cut the straps on her jetpack-backpack."

That's right. He had. Drakken's armpits worked themselves into a lather, no doubt ruining the fancy shirt.

How could he not even have _remembered _that?

"And did you?" the prosecutor asked, his tone gentle, as if he wanted to protect Shego, too.

"Yes, sir, I did."

Drakken had to admit, he was impressed by Shego's courtroom manner. She said "yes" instead of "yeah," looked the prosecutor full in the face, never once licked her lips or stammered "ummm" or gave any other sign that she was nervous.

He was starting to think that was because she wasn't. It cramped him so bad, he almost lost his grip on the edges of the tables before him.

"Did you know what Dr. Drakken's scheme entailed?" the prosecutor asked, several gut-spasms later.

At least they were calling him Dr. Drakken this time. At his last trial, they'd insisted on calling him _Mr._ Drakken, as though he hadn't earned the unofficial title he'd bestowed upon himself.

Shego gave her head a tidy shake. "Not entirely. I knew it involved distracting Kim Possible, and it involved his Synthodrones -"

"Synthodrones?" the prosecutor said.

"Synthetic life forms with human appearance and superhuman strength, designed only to do Drakken's bidding," Shego recited. So she _had_ been listening! Drakken made a mental note to scold her for pretending she hadn't been.

If he ever saw her again. The pain stabbed him.

The prosecutor bobbed his head. "Yes. Continue."

" - and there was a plan to saturate the world with evil technology," Shego finished. "But, no, I didn't know how it all tied together."

"He didn't tell you?" the prosecutor asked, more for drama than anything else, Drakken was certain.

"No, sir." Whoever this was sounded absolutely nothing like Shego anymore.

"Did that concern you?"

Shego shrugged one shoulder. "A bit at first. Then I assumed he was simply learning from his mistakes. Using his brain for once."

That was the first sarcasm she'd let slip, and the look she sent Drakken was loaded with more. He clenched his teeth together, as if that could keep his bones from liquifying and sliding him down in his seat. _Why don't you like me anymore, Shego?_ cried out within him.

"Do you know for a fact that he was planning to kill Kim Possible?" the prosecutor went on.

"Oh, yes. That was the one thing he _did_ tell me."

"And did he attempt to do so?" The prosecutor puckered his brows in preparation, even though he surely already knew the answer.

"Yes, sir. On several occasions. Including the one where he kidnapped her father."

The prosecutor's whole forehead lifted. "Was the plan for the father to die, as well?"

"Yes, sir."

Drakken was aware of every painful beat of his heart. He moaned, nausea working its way up from his belly again. Why was this man so determined to rehash things that were common knowledge to everyone in this courtroom? Huh? Huh? HUH?!

One of Drakken's lawyers placed a hand over his own. It was probably meant to be reassuring, but Drakken jerked away from it, his nervous system on fire.

"Obviously those attempts did not work." Drakken thought he would throw up from the overwhelming monotony of the prosecutor's flatline voice. It was too much, like that extra cookie you thought you could squeeze in.

He could see Shego fighting her very nature to keep from smart-mouthing the guy. "No, they didn't, and I don't think he minded that too much." Shego leaned forward, as if she were reading a secret straight out of her diary. "He didn't want to kill her until after he'd broken her heart and taught her a lesson about" - Shego twitched her fingers into quotation marks, and Drakken mouthed the words with her - "what happened to teenage brats who messed with genius supervillains."

"And when did he plan to do that?"

"When she surrendered, and he made her watch him take over the world," Shego said delightedly. "He was very intent on making sure she saw his victory."

"He thought she would surrender?" the prosecutor asked.

"Yes, sir. He blackmailed her with one of his Synthodrones. Eric." Shego's eyes widened in phony innocence. "Who Kim _thought _was her boyfriend. Drakken pretended he'd kidnapped him."

Drakken trembled. He hadn't heard his plan dissected like that yet. All of his genius, the greatness he'd almost achieved, laid out flat, as if there was nothing in those sparkling accomplishments to be proud of. Everything he'd bragged about came up as shame now.

The prosecutor dusted his hands together, like this was just another day at the office. The abstract concept of life couldn't be reduced to physical atoms that fell in dust specks from the man's fingers, and yet Drakken got the distinct impression that was what was happening. "Thank you, no further questions," he said crisply.

Shego's lawyer patted her shoulder like she was an obedient horse and led her to sit down. If she had been any nearer, Drakken might have stuck out a foot to trip her. Coerced or not, she'd tightened the proverbial noose around his neck.

The only spot where their orbits could have collided didn't even click, because that was when Shego spun to look at him. Her chin came to a cruel point. And then, with her focus still on Drakken, she smiled.

And despite all the pretty Mona Lisa hair, it was ugly.

Drakken felt like sand being poured through a . . . sand. . . sifter, grains of him leaking through holes, big chunks breaking off, and when he was in one piece again, everything was upside-down and malfunctioning. His thoughts were as half-formed and dull as they'd been the time he'd slammed his head into one of his doom rays - he thought it was the one that melted things - and jolted his brain with what the doctor called a mild concussion. Mild but very, very disorienting.

Life in prison loomed over his head, and Drakken knew he deserved every second of it. Maybe he should do his mother proud and accept his fate with nobility and dignity. Somewhere inside him, there was surely something that could still do that.

But the fear was so much stronger. Fear that he would spend eternity in that sewer run-off place they called a "correctional facility," as if they would actually try to help him there instead of just keeping him so far from the secure throne he needed to be seated on, far above anything harmful. Fear that filled every cell and shook it until it rattled.

Drakken rested his elbows on his knees to hide the shaking and yearned for his Doomsday devices. They could always take the fear supervillains weren't supposed to feel in the first place and blast it to smithereens.

Whatever those were.

**()()()()()()**

Kim wasn't proud to admit it, but she would rather remember Shego slamming full-on into the electrified tower than watch the same little minx stroll back to her seat like a politician banking on re-election. At least _Shego_'s shocks hadn't blasted out of the fingers of the boy she loved.

_Thought _she loved. What was that word Dad always used when he commented on the Oh Boyz's love songs? "Infatuated"? He'd always been careful not to say it about Kim and her crushes, even with her botched-up-by-braces first kiss, though she could tell when he was thinking it. And he hadn't been about Eric. The Syntho-whatever had even won Dad's approval.

Nothing about Eric had been real, except for the hurt he left behind. Kim was feeling it now, in lumps everywhere, but she was able to shove it aside into the teetering stack of things she had to be mad at Drakken for. The witnesses called up after that only gave her more.

Nakasumi described his almost-kidnapping and how it had broken his heart to see his creative property used for evil. Dad explained about being captured and brain-tapped and, oh yeah, almost fed to an octopus mutated to be just about as bloodthirsty as Drakken himself. Ned detailed the layers of threats and bribes that had taken place at Bueno Nacho.

Each testimony ratcheted up the determination Kim always felt at a supervillain's trial until it was completely beyond from the usual calm. For Drakken's sake, he'd better not come with half a mile of her.

Drakken had just sat there and taken it all, only blinking the wide black holes and swinging his legs. That was _so_ not his usual courtroom M.O. Kim knew - she'd seen THAT more times than she cared to remember. In the past, if Drakken had a good lawyer and thought he could get off, he would sit with his head held high, chin raised at Kim in nah-nah-nah-nah smugness. If he didn't, he would slouch in the chair and pout, shooting her dark looks every other minute.

Either way, they were tactics Rip Snorter had outgrown by the sixth grade. And one more type of typical Kim couldn't expect anymore.

And nothing had ever been able to shut Drakken up before. No matter what temperament he'd brought with him to court, he always made enough noise for an entire _gang _of crooks. Grumbling under his breath. Booing as Kim walked to the witness stand. Leaping from his seat to shout "I object!" at stupid things like Kim saying his scheme wasn't well-planned, no matter how many times the judge banged his gavel and told him HE wasn't allowed to object.

Now Drakken sat curled over himself until he could have been mistaken for Quasimodo, spindly fingers gripping his face as if that were the only way to keep his twisted spirit alive. His whole body looked like it had been kicked into submission.

And if he stayed that way forever, Kim couldn't have been happier.

The look on his face when Shego went up to testify, though. . . she could almost feel sorry for him. It would be like Ron betraying _her_. Shego herself stood straight as an ironing board, as poised and unruffled as always, not the slightest bit fazed by her partner-in-crime breaking down right there in front of her.

"Your Honor, I call Miss Kim Possible up to the stand."

Kim took a deep breath and touched the gold-band necklace Mom had slipped over her head this morning. It pulsed between her fingers as she marched up the aisle like a drill sergeant in high heels. The extra three inches of height those gave her helped Kim NOT to be standing nose-to-platform with the witness stand. She took the oath and introduced herself as Drakken's arch-nemesis in a voice that didn't break.

"Miss Possible, how long have you known Dr. Drakken?" was the prosecutor's first question.

"Almost two years." Even though it felt like it had been several lifetimes since Drakken had first dangled her over his shark tank. Back when she'd _known_ he didn't have the guts to stay and watch.

Every eye in the audience was fixed on Kim, waiting for more. She could almost hear Monique telling her, "You've got this in the _bag_, girl," with Mom saying, "Go get him, Kimmy," and Dad chiming in with, "Anything's possible for a Possible."

Coming in loudest of all was Ron: "Out there. . . in here. . ."

"He tried to feed Ron and me to his pet sharks," Kim said, folding her hands against the wood in the professional way she'd had plenty of practice with. "And he's been out to destroy us ever since."

The prosecutor slid his glasses to the very end of his nose. "And would you say this vendetta has blinded him to the well-being of others?"

"If by that you mean he'll do anything to anyone to get to me, then yea - _yes_," Kim corrected herself. She re-folded her hands so she wouldn't rake them through her hair. "He AND Shego," she added pointedly, "have put almost everyone I know in danger at least once."

Shego's discomfort would have been imperceptible to someone who didn't know what to look for. Kim did, and it was hyper-satisfying.

Drakken made an asthmatic sound. He was tapping his fingers together and gulping his Adam's apple up and down, as obvious as Shego was veiled. The little coward.

The prosecutor nodded with sympathy. "So it was no surprise that the first place the Diablos attacked was your place of residence." He sounded as detached as ever, but Kim was close enough to pick out a glint of this-Drakken-is-an-oozing-zit-of-a-human-being in the iron eyes that matched his hair. She decided she liked the guy.

"Not really, no," Kim agreed. Though she felt her face shutting down, inside she was reliving the buzz of _ohmigosh, ohmigosh, ohmigosh!_ followed by the angry punch that she wasn't safe in her own living room anymore. The anger she'd been so relieved to find.

"And who was in the house besides yourself at the time?"

Kim gripped the stand until her nails flared white. "Ron Stoppable. My father. My mother. My little brothers." She glanced over the audience and dropped to a stage whisper to drive the point home. "They're _twelve_."

A disapproving murmur wafted up like a smoke signal. Kim snapped back toward Drakken in triumph just in time to see the shadows under his eyes grow longer and darker. His tiny Drakken-hands flipped around and around each other, fingers fidgeting nervously in his lap. No, worse than nervously. Guiltily.

Kim had to concentrate ferociously on him to imagine the trembling lips curling back from his teeth, the crumpled eyebrow smooth and suave, the mushed-in face set in a cocky smirk while he'd been flatly informing her she would surrender. That was the _real _Drakken. Maybe he'd managed to stow it someplace, but it would come spurting back out when she least expected it, ready to finish the job.

Which was why he absolutely HAD to go down. It wasn't about the thrill of the chase anymore. Drakken had to be locked away where he would never get the chance to hurt anyone again.

"Has Dr. Drakken been known to use psychological warfare before?" the prosecutor asked.

Kim was nodding before the words, which she'd only heard from Barkin up until now, all sunk in. "Absolutely. He mind-controlled me and forced me to capture Ron. Tried to get me to kill Rufus. And mind-controlled my grandmother and told _her _to kill _me_."

That circled around the courtroom for a few seconds before the prosecutor held up his hand to an audience who appeared to have been shocked into silence. "And he utilized more the night of the attack?" he said to Kim.

"Way before that, actually. He -" Kim planted her feet apart and leaned in across the stand. "Drakken had already arranged for a Synthodrone to infiltrate my life in disguise as the perfect boyfriend. And the perfect distraction."

"But what he did the night of the attack went far beyond distraction, yes?" the prosecutor pressed.

Kim closed her eyes against the unfamiliar presence of tears. "He faked a kidnapping. Told me he'd captured 'Eric'" - his name soured between her teeth - "and that I had to surrender if I ever wanted to see him alive again."

The air remained dead until the prosecutor spoke again. "Can you assure me beyond the shadow of a doubt that this emotional manipulation was his intention?" His voice was expectant.

"I can do better than that." Kim squinted her eyelids open and reached into the silky pocket of her blouse. "I can show you."

**()()()()()()**

Oooh, how Drakken hated Kim Possible! Loathed her with every fiber of his being. And that was saying something, because he had a very fibrous being.

But then the girl had to cast her eyes down, the bright noonday sun glowing on her nose. She seemed to be shrinking, rounding out, becoming Japanese.

This was "weirding him out," to use that cursed teen slang. Drakken had broken practically every law except the ones of Thermodynamics and had long since stopped caring. What was with the conscience _now_?

But the alternative was murderous, and Drakken was currently too feeble to have stepped on a spider. He couldn't stop thinking about Shego's nasty grin. It couldn't have been meant for him, yet directing it at anyone else in the room would have gotten her cited for contempt of court at the very least.

Drakken grimaced against the lift of his gorge. He hadn't thought much of breakfast the first time around, and each rerun just cubed its repulsion factor.

It was obvious no such illness was strangling Kim Possible. She looked solid and strong up there, and somehow bigger than Drakken. As she reached into her pocket, her face was smooth, shiny. Untroubled. Naturally.

He'd put fear on her face that wonderful, terrible night. Fear that stayed, not the kind that flickered and disappeared like the current of a dying battery. It had whetted his appetite for more.

But if he was begging her for more, wasn't she still the one in control?

_How do you do this?_ Drakken mentally screamed at his arch-foe. _How do you always beat me?_

"Hello, everyone."

Drakken jolted at the tiny voice. Had the bacteria of the world finally grown tired of being persecuted with soaps and wipes and staged an uprising? He'd always _known _this day was coming! Maybe he could cut a deal with them -

A scan of the room revealed no nanotechnology, however, and the voice seemed to be emanating from Kim Possible's walkie-talkie thing, which she must have pulled out when he wasn't looking. Drakken squinted at it, contacts clinging painfully to his eyeballs, and saw only a blurry mass topped by curls.

Oh. It was _him_. The Tech Tyke, whatever his name was. Another kid who could afford to buy the equipment to further his genius inventions instead of always having to steal it. Another kid whose parents were proud of him. Another kid who the whole world whooped and cheered over.

Yes, Drakken had to admit, he was sorely jealous: of Kim Possible, of this boy, of everyone in the room. Of the man who would have to clean out the toilet he'd just barfed in, for Frankenstein's sake! Because _they_ weren't the ones who were going to be cloistered in a dark cell with only their nightmares for company.

See, that sounded all poetic, but deep down he was basically sobbing, _I don't want to go back to jail!_ They had already stripped him of his power, power he wouldn't be able to survive in there without.

"And who might you be?" the prosecutor asked. A smile was playing around his lips, when there was absolutely nothing in the universe to smile about.

"I'm Wade Load," the kid stated. "And I'm here to show you the extent of Dr. Drakken's emotional manipulation."

From the sound of him, Wade hadn't even hit puberty yet, rendering the words ridiculous. _Ooh, don't we sound smart?_ Drakken wanted to scoff. _You think you can play with the big boys, eh?_ He would have snickered, except his own vocal chords were stuck together and would have produced cracks of their own. And this was the kid who had figured out how to disarm the Diablos, which left Drakken feeling like a bona fide dummy.

"Um. . . do I need to go under oath, too?" Wade began, a little less confidently this time. "Because I brought my own Bible."

He held up a smear of a book, and Drakken let them hash that out while his mind wandered. Kim Possible hadn't lied at all when she was up on the stand. He _had_ done all the cruel, evil things she'd recounted. Engaged in "psychological warfare" - and, oooh, didn't that have a wonderfully sinister ring to it? Mind-controlled her. Commanded her grandmother to finish her. Exploited her silly teenage embarrassment to bring about her own disappearance - Kim hadn't mentioned _that _one, but it was one of his finest hours.

In spite of his earlier anti-smiling pronouncement, Drakken felt one slip across his face. As Shego had said, nobody did torture like him.

Kind of wished he hadn't tried to destroy the naked mole rat, the one called Rufus. What kind of person killed a naked mole rat? Drakken had fond memories of the little critter, sitting warmly in the palm of his hand, letting Drakken tickle his tummy and nuzzle him up to his face with the sheer joy that radiated from his goodness -

Drakken let his fists drop to the table. There was no denying it. He had been happier than a termite in a carpentry shop when the Attitudinator had turned him good. Why couldn't he have stayed like that? Why did he have to give it all up for the sake of that _idiot _Stoppable?

It dropped on Drakken's mind like a bowling ball dropping on his foot. Because the world would be better off, Kim Possible had said. That was how much faith she had in his incompetence.

It was true, though, wasn't it? If Drakken had been evil enough, he would have succeeded in eliminating Kim Possible that night. If he were good enough, he wouldn't have killed anyone at all.

And if he wasn't good enough or evil enough - or worst of all, intelligent enough - what _was _he? Drakken punched his knuckles up to his face. He could stop his eyes from crying, but not his nose. Mucus streamed over his fingers.

Then a thick cord was being run from the biggest TV screen Drakken had ever seen outside one of his lairs, and the other end was being plugged into the walkie-talkie-thingie. Then Wade was saying, "Here we go" and pressing what must have been a button, and both screens came alive with a video. A good-quality one, too, clear and crisp with no hint of film fuzz.

In it, Kim Possible stared at her walkie-talkie in borderline helplessness while a voice rang throughout the room. His own voice, with the intonation of a killer. That movie-villain flair he had been trying to perfect for so long. It was just how he'd always wished he could sound.

Even as Drakken's chest swelled with pride, though, different emotions disoriented him. It was one thing to feel it, the hate and the power coursing through you, begging for release. It was another to have actually _done _it, in real life, where there was no chance of undoing it.

Drakken slumped forward in his seat, not even tipping the chair with his insubstantial weight, and worked on convincing himself that it was somebody else's voice rumbling the floor from the speakers. But every gravel-filled rise and fall could have belonged to no one but Dr. Drakken. He heard Kim Possible speak, reeling in her tone so it wouldn't go shrill, heard snatches of himself saying things like, "Kimberly Ann," "you will surrender," and "she met the _nicest _boy!"

They got his heartbeat pounding away in his ears. By the time the video was over and Wade had been thanked and the screens had been turned off, Drakken could have sworn it had slammed to a halt entirely. If Shego was liquid and Kim Possible was solid, what did that make him?

Gaseous, which, contrary to popular belief, did not mean "burping all the time" (although, come to think of it, he did have a bit of reflux going on). No, Drakken was sure he had morphed into a vapor, with evaporated fingers that couldn't clutch on to anything. The biggest planets in the solar system were made of gases, but those were pulled by gravity around a solid or liquid core. Without it, the wind could have blown them away.

Drakken shot a look toward the window in the hopes that he could open it and float straight out. No such luck. Every pane was locked from the inside.

He shook his head, ponytail lashing against his cheeks with the force of a whip. His brain was so frightened, it was starting to think in nonsense. Drakken gathered his scientific knowledge around him like a favorite blanket and glowered right smack at his nemesis. This was all _her_ fault!

Kim Possible responded with a glare of her own. Drakken dropped his gaze and instantly cursed himself for it. He hated her, wanted her to feel the heat of his anger, but once she was actually looking at him, he couldn't meet her eyes. Not with that hardness to them.

"And what happened after that, Miss Possible?" the prosecutor said.

"We went to his latest lair," Kim Possible reported, still fixing Drakken with hot eyes. Drakken knew it was _her _hate he was seeing, and it was blinding as the sun. You couldn't look right at it. "Once we got there, Drakken 'released' Eric and let him come to me." She bit off the words.

This anger didn't rage wildly through her, though, obscuring her judgment and driving her fist into his face. She told the truth in a smooth, crystal-clear way that made Drakken wish the truth were something different. Every insult from his arch-foe should have felt like a compliment, but somehow it only slumped him further.

"And what did 'Eric' do?" The prosecutor pronounced Drakken's best Synthodrone's name as if he were speaking of someone's imaginary friend. Drakken's intestines were in a complete knot.

"He came to me and stroked my hair. Told me everything was going to be okay." Kim Possible flung her hair back over her shoulders and gave a sniff of disgust, not one of held-back tears. "And as soon as I called him 'Eric' - you could tell he'd just been _waiting _for me to use his name - he told me he was really Synthodrone number whatever."

901.

"And then he shocked me with his fingertips," Kim Possible finished.

The prosecutor's whole face opened. "My word! Were you injured?"

"Enough to be knocked unconscious for two hours," Kim Possible replied stiffly. Someone in the audience gasped. "I went to a doctor the next day, though, and he said everything was still working the way it was supposed to."

Drakken put his head flat down on the table. Naturally. He couldn't even have left her with heart damage?

"Miss Possible," the prosecutor said, pulling himself up to his full height, "do you believe it was Dr. Drakken's intention to inform you 'Eric' was a Synthodrone before he murdered you?"

_Murdered_. The word squeezed Drakken into a stinging, knees-up lump.

Kim Possible gazed unwaveringly out over the audience, who all appeared to be waiting for their cue to fall down and worship her. "Yes, I do. He didn't just want me dead - he wanted to hurt me in any way he possibly could." She gave the hair another fling and folded her arms across her chest. She was such a skinny little thing - who would have ever dreamed it would be so hard to get rid of her?

The prosecutor gave a long, slow nod, as if his hypothesis was now sound enough to be classified as a theory. A nod that any scientist could identify. "Thank you, Miss Possible," he said. "No further questions, Your Honor."

For an even longer, slower moment, Kim Possible turned to face Drakken. Her glittery expression reminded him of chess - a game that he had the brainpower for but not the attention span, so he usually wound up using the pieces as finger puppets. But he was very familiar with that superior look people got in their eyes right before they made the winning move, and that was what Kim Possible had in hers now.

_Checkmate,_ they said. _Gotcha, Drakken._

And Drakken felt the murder course through his blood again.

**()()()()()()**

Kim breathed in deeply, gave the judge a polite nod, and stepped down from the stand, headed toward Ron. She still felt like a Moodulator that had been run over by a semi, but there was no point in crying over a boyfriend who hadn't even been real.

Eric had led her to the perfect guy. No, not perfect. But perfect for _her_.

The long arms made their clumsy circle around her, and Ron rubbed her back exactly the way she'd rubbed his after _his _testimony. Kim let go of the only smile she'd managed in hours. She could have stayed standing, the past firmly behind her, without Ron's arms around her, but the future would've seemed way dimmer without his goodness to lean against. Not to mention he was the only other person around here who knew just how deep Drakken's evil went.

No wonder Mom had gotten that "I-approve" gleam in her eyes when they'd come home after prom hand-in-hand.

"Ya did great, KP," Ron whispered in her ear. "How do you hold it together like that? I mean, you weren't even cryin' or anything."

The rush of affection Kim felt for him - and the relief at knowing she could still project girl-who-could-do-anything - made her laugh despite the lump. "No big. Crying is _so_ not my thing," she reminded both of them.

Ron pulled back and looked at her with serious eyes. "I woulda been. If I were you."

There was a point when she would have answered with a hair-toss and a, "Well, you're not me, are you?", and it almost made Kim sick. Ron was the best friend she'd ever had, and she hadn't held him tight enough. Instead, she sneaked a peek back over her shoulder at Drakken. She was definitely holding it together better than HIM. The tremor of his hands would have registered on the Richter scale.

"Any more witnesses, Mr. Barrister?" the judge asked in a Southern monotone.

The prosecutor nodded briskly and then gave the room a broad glance. "One more, Your Honor. We would like to call Dr. Drakken to the stand."

A gasp sucked the air dry from the direction of the defendant's chair. This was Kim's favorite part - giving Drakken a chance to incriminate himSELF. Kim couldn't help but smirk. This should be fun.

Seconds ticked by before the judge said dryly, "Dr. Drakken, will you be joining us today?"

It looked like it took all of Drakken's visibly-ebbing strength just to get himself vertical. His face seemed so much older, as if age lines had sketched it while Kim wasn't looking. Or maybe it was just that she'd never seen it this miserable before.

It was _so _un-Kim to relish it, but she did. Big-time.

**()()()()()()()**

He didn't know what to say, he didn't know what to say, hedidn'tknowwhattosay.

Somehow, Drakken succeeded in making it to the front of the room, taking his place behind the witness stand that had seemed like a protective hedge to everyone before him, and laying his hand flat on a Bible. He muttered, "I do," which was apparently the right answer, although it took him several minutes to remember if he was coming under oath or getting married. That was the kind of shape he was in, and they expected him to be able to _talk_? Coherently?

In Drakken's estimation, words were much like lab mice. Even the biggest, most impressive of them he could coax out, win their wary trust as he held forth about his brilliant schemes. But as soon as the unexpected hit, they went scurrying back to the corners of his mind and huddled there.

Right now, they were scampering through his head as if Mr. Bar Exam or whatever his stupid name was were chasing them with a pet snake. Letters formed combinations, but Drakken had no idea what any of them meant. He looked up at the judge and gulped so hard he was sure his Adam's apple slammed into his windpipe.

"And you are Dr. Drakken?" the judge said. The drawl was gone. School principals had nothing on this man's verbal punishment.

Shego would have had a thousand sarcastic replies about how he was kinda hard to mistake for anybody else, but Drakken's tongue was halfway down his esophagus. He could barely manage to nod.

"Answers must be verbal, Dr. Drakken," Mr. Prosecutor pitched at him from below. So far below, Drakken got vertigo like he was gazing down into the Grand Canyon.

Drakken shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and scowled so he'd look tougher than he was feeling. "Y-y-yes," he stammered.

The judge leaned forward, the wood pressing into a chest twice the size of Drakken's. "We've heard from many witnesses today, Dr. Drakken. Haven't we? All credible, too."

"Yee-ees," Drakken answered. Testily. What did the man expect from him, an argument that what they'd both watched unfold hadn't actually happened?

The one good thing about the room was that it had an enormously high ceiling. But it could be pressing in on Drakken, he felt so dizzy. Dizzy and defenseless and _naked_; the judge's sharp, coffee-colored eyes seemed to cut right through Drakken's snazzy clothes, as if they didn't count at all.

And. . . ugh. Why did he have to think about coffee? It wasn't food, but just the fact that it had to be swallowed. . .

Drakken hyperventilated into his sweaty palm. _Please_, he begged whatever he'd been talking to in the bathroom, _don't let me throw up in court._

It didn't look like that was going to be an easy request. Especially not when the judge folded his hands on the podium and stroked his chin, right where his white beard was tidily trimmed. All was dead still.

For once, Drakken wished he _could _be distracted - from the blow that all evidence pointed toward coming. And, for once, there was a complete absence of flickering bulbs or weird smells or rumbling motorcycles outside the window to steal his focus.

Then the blow came. "Tell me something, Dr. Drakken," the judge began, dangerously quiet. "What were you thinking when you killed those people?"

No, no, _no_! That was _not_ how it had happened! Even as guilty as he felt, Drakken refused to be accused under false pretenses. The burden he shouldered was heavy enough already. Right words or not, he had to use what he had to correct the man.

"I wasn't thinking anything!" he blurted. "That was the problem! I didn't mean to kill them - I just didn't think - I mean, I couldn't - nobody was supposed to die!"

**()()()()()()**

Kim startled. That choked, suffering voice sounded nothing like her arch-nemesis's nasty boom. Her instincts began a sympathy pang, though it immediately twisted into satisfaction that the madman who'd nearly destroyed everyone and everything she loved was having his world ripped away from him, too.

Drakken's knees wobbled, as if he were about to collapse under the weight of his own evil. If he hadn't _so _completely deserved all of this and more, Kim would have pitied him.

And what he'd just said about not expecting anyone to die? Please. Drakken must have used up all of his brain cells on the Diablo scheme if THAT was the best he could come up with.

The judge wasn't buying it either. "Oh, really?" he demanded. His harsh sarcasm could have taken lessons from Shego's. "What about Kim Possible? And her father?"

Kim found herself scooting forward in her seat.

A spark of the old Drakken flared. "Well, yes, _them_!" He rolled his entire _head _in exasperation. "But nobody _innocent_!"

_Yeah. Thanks, Drakken._ And to think she'd almost been feeling sorry for him. Kim wished him despondent again.

The judge cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. "So - let me get this straight. You orchestrated an attack on the entire world, sending out machines capable of toppling skyscrapers, demolishing cars, and melting human flesh - and you didn't expect anyone to get hurt?"

"Hurt, yes!" Drakken's words came out in an unmistakable blurt of pain. "You can fix hurt!"

Drakken closed his eyes. Even the lids seemed thin, as if they'd been painted on with watercolor. Kim squinted her own at him. If this was an act - and what else COULD it be? - it was totally inconsistent. Why would he have admitted to wanting to kill Dad and her if he was going for the whole "harmless" thing?

Even from here, Kim could see the tears trembling on his bottom lashes. The raw hurt in him would have taken a way better actor than Drakken, even at his sliest, to fake.

Was he really clueless enough to believe that he could have pulled off a quick, neat take-over-the-world? With the _Diablos_, of all things?

Kim grunted to herself. Well, if anyone could be, it was Drakken. He should have gotten a life sentence just for terminal stupidity.

_And Eric_. Kim's hands pulled into fists, searching for a really painful spot on Drakken's body to sink into.

"Are you sorry, then, Dr. Drakken?" the judge asked, pressing two fingers to his forehead.

The torture was breaking Drakken into a sweat. It wasn't even CLOSE to a just punishment. "Sorry? For what? That people died?" His voice broke into fragility again.

"No." The judge took his fingers down and extended them sternly toward Drakken, who was shaking like a wet dog. "That you launched the attack in the first place."

The already-big eyes tripled in size - or maybe it just looked that way because his pupils had grown as small as poppy seeds. The skin around Drakken's mouth jerked rapidly, lips already groping for a lie he couldn't seem to find.

**()()()()()()**

He was under oath. He had to tell the truth. But Drakken didn't even know what the truth _was_.

People had died. He was sorry for that. Absolutely. Positively. However, his plan had been so brilliant - with a few tweaks, it surely would have worked!

And then Drakken would have been ruler of the world, instead of feeling like a head louse surrounded by people with combs and prescription shampoo. So was he _sorry_?

Drakken thought of his mother and wanted to say yes. He pictured Jack Hench and wanted to say no. Both answers were whole, though, and he was broken. There was nothing to represent the conflict inside.

The ocular anger Drakken could sense being aimed his way was disproportionate to the size of the room. Each person must have had six eyes, and they were all glaring at him. The weight of unforgiveness pressed at the nape of Drakken's neck. Would it even matter if he were sorry?

He took a breath, one that hiccuped. And he opened his mouth.

**()()()()()()()**

"I don't know," Drakken said.

Kim closed her eyes and casually resituated herself. She was disappointed. If he'd said yes, with the chest-clasping and sigh-heaving that came with it, she could have been completely sure that he was putting on an act. If he'd said no, she would have had a good excuse to leap the barrier and pummel him senseless.

Either way would have swept Drakken out with the garbage. But "I don't know"? What was THAT supposed to mean?

The tears were now puddling into the sunken, baggy spots under his eyes. The awful Dr. Drakken was crying.

The judge banged his gavel, a sound that vibrated through Drakken's sternum. "The jury will now recess until they have reached a verdict."

Great, as Shego would have said. How long would that be? How many minutes or hours would he have to squirm in this chair, waiting for his fate to be handed down to him?

Maybe not long, Drakken realized with another squirm. The evidence presented had been irrefutable. It was tough to imagine them _not_ unanimously voting him guilty within five minutes.

But even five minutes seemed endless. Drakken bounced one leg off the other. What was he supposed to _do _while they were recessing? Didn't the accused have the right to a magazine or something?

Well, he could always recite the periodic table. _Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium_. . .

It wasn't having its usual calming effect, not even when he added atomic weights to the list. The acidic taste creeping toward Drakken's mouth told him quite clearly how he was going to have to occupy his time.

**()()()()()()()()**

For a moment, there was complete silence in the courtroom. Kim could hear Ron panting like he always did when he was about to fidget right out of his pants. Then bodies sprang from chairs, hands rooted through purses to find cell phones and turn them back on. The guards ushered a moaning, doubled-over Drakken from the room.

Kim herself didn't move except to find her Kimmunicator and start its timer. Unless this jury was completely corrupt or totally broke upstairs, it should take them all of about twenty minutes to decide to convict Drakken, so she'd probably better not get too wrapped up in anything.

Drakken's defeat spun itself out in Kim's mind, the way it had all those dozens of times before she'd swooped it and made it a reality. Yeah, it was _mucho _hard to watch his fate be decided by someone other than her. Especially with the Kimmunicator's screen still displaying the last frame of Wade's video - a taunting Drakken with unmistakable evil contorting the smirk that cut into one pudgy cheek.

But as Kim had hoped, this jury knew what they were doing. They were only gone for _fifteen _minutes, and then everyone was reconvening, including Drakken. He looked terrible, smelled worse, and was moving like the icky old man he was. Kim turned her nose away from him.

"Has the jury reached a verdict?" the judge droned.

Ron muttered something about how they wouldn't have come back if they hadn't.

"We have, Your Honor." The foreman paused to burn a glare into Drakken.

Kim was feelin' some pretty intense heat herself. "He is SO over," she hissed to Ron.

"And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy," Ron hissed back.

The foreman straightened his spine and read from a piece of paper. "On all counts of intellectual property theft, the jury finds Dr. Drakken - guilty. On all counts of abduction and attempted abduction, the jury finds Dr. Drakken - guilty. On all counts of blackmail, the jury finds Dr. Drakken - guilty."

How stinkin' perfect was this?

"On all counts of manslaughter, the jury finds Dr. Drakken - guilty. On all counts of attempted murder, the jury finds Dr. Drakken - guilty."

Kim studied the judge while _he_ studied Drakken. She wouldn't have wanted to be on the business end of those eyes. "You have been found guilty as charged," the judge said gravely. "You will serve a life sentence in a maximum-security federal penitentiary - "

Ron's squeeze wrung Kim's fingers out.

" - _without _possibility of parole."

Now, THERE was a butt-kicking if Kim had ever witnessed one.

She turned to Ron and held up a satisfied hand for him to smack. The boy had gotten stronger over the last few months - the resulting high-five stung Kim's palm and blended with the caterwaul that rose from the center of the room. They turned to look, and Ron's "boo-yah!" died on his lips.

Kim watched the shudder pass through Drakken's skinny skeleton. Then his legs finally gave way and faceplanted him directly into the carpet. If Kim had thought he'd been crying before, that was nothing compared to the wails he was sputtering now.

It was a ragged, broken sound that ripped at Kim's nerve endings. Two months ago, it would have triggered pity, and even now she felt it weighing down on her out of habit. But Diablo Night had all but turned it impossible to truly feel anything toward him other than hate. After all, what else COULD you feel for someone without a soul?

Drakken had always shed a few tears whenever she'd taken him down, but Kim hadn't seen him cry majorly since - since -

Since the Attitudinator had broken, turning Ron into Zorpox and Drakken into a baby doll. So much of one that Shego couldn't stand him and dumped him almost right into Kim's lap. Once Drakken had put it together that his sidekick had abandoned him, he'd broken down bawling. That was a whole new definition of awkweird, but Kim had crouched down beside him and tried to comfort him, telling him she would contact Wade and everything would be okay.

Drakken had followed it all with total trust, like a baby who hadn't been around long enough to be suspicious of people. He'd offered to help in any way he could, he'd befriended Rufus, and he'd slid down her rope like one of those toy poles at the playground, grinning so big Kim could see his twelve-year molars. . .

Kim couldn't shake the memory - Drakken slumped in front of her, trusting her even through the tears streaming down his face. It was a warm, rounded face that had known nothing of killing.

How much of that had been Ron's goodness in him, and how much had been Drakken? Was any of that person still left in him now?

Kim couldn't remember the last time she'd run away from anything - maybe helping Janitor Joe hose down the boys' locker room? But it felt like that was what she was doing now as she let Ron put his arm around her and lead her away from Drakken into a circle of admirers. Friends and neighbors and people Kim didn't even recognize were clapping her on the back, congratulating her, and thanking her for saving their lives.

There was no place for Drakken in that circle of love.

Dad wanted to do that totally embarrassing thing where he swept you up in his arms, and Kim was so glad he wasn't octopus chow that she actually let him. "You did it, Kimmie," he muttered into her starting-to-fall-apart bun. "You put him away."

Kim patted his strong, only-slightly-shaky shoulder. "You helped," she whispered back.

Mom stroked a few strands of hair back from Kim's face. "We're so proud of you, sweetheart," she said. And she obviously was - her face didn't have the same pure triumph as Dad's, though. It sagged sadly, for all the people who had been killed or wounded or hurt to their cores that night.

And then Monique was there, smiling from one classy hoop earring to the other. "Man, I wish Barkin were here," she said. "You would have just _passed _speech class!" She linked elbows with Kim. "Girl, you were fab. You have _got _to help me work on my PSV!"

Kim assured Monique that, of course, she would help her with her public speaking voice, and she let the little old lady who lived up on the corner kiss her cheek, and she laughed as her father eyed Ron as if he didn't know which look to give him. Must have been hard for Dad - the one boy he trusted around his daughter, and then she started dating _him_.

No one mentioned the people Kim HADN'T been able to save. She'd won the war in their honor. Still, if she'd been at her Possible-best, they would have made it - Kim just knew it. But, noooo, she was too busy going ga-ga over Eric the Hottie.

"I killed people," Kim murmured to no one.

The hand that came down on her forearm was so warm and firm Kim was sure it was Dad's.

It wasn't. It was Ron's.

"No, you didn't," he said, voice thick. "You saved people."

The only thing that kept Kim from planting a big smacker right on his lips was that Dad was still standing there.

"Okay, well. We hurricane rock!" Ron laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. "Now, if you fine people will excuse us, we've got a date with lunch." His forehead furrowed. "Or a lunch date. Or - ya know - something."

Ron led the way toward the door in dorky-sweet lopes, with the inevitable stumble over his own feet. Kim got to reach down and help him back up the way she'd done a thousand times since the first day of Pre-K. Except without the eye-roll this time.

Right before they exited, Kim stole one last glance back at Drakken. He was still sobbing as if he were about to die. The tears weren't as delicious as she'd imagined they would be. It was the monster capable of killing Kim wanted to punish, not the crybaby man-child.

_Darn _Drakken! He even made it so you couldn't enjoy watching him get what he deserved.

Kim braced her hands on her hips. That didn't matter. She'd done her duty, put him away where he couldn't hurt anyone, quarantined his disease before it could spread. He would spend the rest of his life eating cafeteria food and showering with the other scum and never knowing freedom again. All of Kim's fiercest hatred couldn't make that any worse.

It was no use setting fire to a person when they were already in hell. Drakken was no longer worth it.

His face was as puffy and red as if he'd stuck it right in a patch of poison ivy. The face that had sneered at her ever since they first met, the face that had once absorbed her words so trustingly. The face she'd punched.

"We _are_ still on for Bueno Nacho, right?" Ron asked once they were on the front steps of the courthouse.

Kim arched a brow at him. "Um, yeah? Celebration time!"

She expected Ron to break into an obnoxious rendition of that '70s song he'd picked up sometime in freshman year. But he just stood there, adorable in his wrinkled formal clothes, quiet for way longer than was normal for Ron to be quiet.

Kim nudged him in the side. "What are you thinking about?" she asked softly.

Ron blew out a sigh. "Christmas," he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly. "The one before last. At the North Pole."

_That _was flinch-worthy. It was Drakken who'd happily escorted them into shelter from the cold, bounced the Tweebs on his knees while he recited from _The Six Tasks of Snowman Hank_, and shoved Kim and Ron under the mistletoe for their first kiss. Kim tried to merge it with the killer eyes and the hard mouth, and she couldn't.

"Why? What are _you _thinkin' about?" Ron said.

"Wishing I hadn't punched him." It was out before Kim could even consider how lame it sounded, but if there was anyone she could count on to NOT tell her that, it was Ron. She shoved her hands back through her hair, loosening the last of the bun that left her scalp throbbing. "_Gosh_, that was unprofessional."

A shadow passed over Ron's grin. "He had it comin'."

"It doesn't matter! I don't want to turn into some kind of sadistic heroine who beats up on the bad guys." Kim brought it down to a whisper and leaned closer. "I don't want to turn into Shego," she confessed.

Ron looked taken aback. The possibility had clearly never occurred to him, and it wasn't making sense now that it had. "You won't, KP," he said, like someone had questioned whether or not the naco was really the most delicious food known to mankind. "I mean, one mistake doesn't make you who you are."

"_And _kicked Shego into the tower."

"Okay, _two _mistakes don't make you who you are," Ron said. He gave her a look of what Kim could only describe as wisdom.

But Kim rested her back against the spring-warmed brick and collected a sigh of her own. Her mind was tracking back to Drakken. When had his mistakes started making him who he was? When had they started outweighing whoever he'd been before? The thought sent a ripple down her backbone.

Ron was still gazing at her hopefully, still with those stick-out ears and that wisdom. The boy might have been mad at Drakken, too, but it would probably never crossed his mind to lay a finger on him. Ron was just so - so _decent_.

Maybe that was exactly what she needed.

"Just - promise you won't let me do it again," Kim said. She geared up her best Puppy Dog Pout, should it come to that.

It didn't. Although Ron continued to appear bewildered, he slung one dangling arm around her neck. "Sure, no problem - I promise." He pulled back and searched her face hopefully. "So - Bueno Nacho?"

"Absolutely." Kim pecked Ron on the cheek and was rewarded with a goofy, I still-can't-believe-you're-really-my-girlfriend grin that sent her way beyond butterflies. She loved it more every time.

That and the happy way he jumped down the courthouse steps two at a time. Kim still called, "You're going to break your neck!" after him, but it was totally precious.

There was always the possibility that Drakken could get help while he was in prison, Kim thought as she followed Ron down the steps. Maybe somebody in there could make sense of his twisted little brain so he could do something other than rot and die.

It was the only kindness she could grant the man. It had better be about two weeks from never before she saw him again.

Kim shook her shoulders to shed the last of the bitterness and positioned herself at the bottom of the steps - ready, as always, to catch Ron if he fell.

**()()()()()()()()**

_Be brave, Drakken_, something inside was telling him. _Be strong. _But Drakken couldn't stop crying. It felt as though his body had been ripped straight down the middle by savage hands - which, of course, it hadn't. No human being could have survived that long enough to notice the pain. _His _pain, though, wouldn't stop, and so the tears couldn't either.

It had been months since Drakken had sobbed like this in public. Even his meltdown at the police station the night of the Diablos had only been witnessed by a single cop with a scary gun in his holster. Now, he was right out in the open, and Drakken could already hear the flashbulbs going off as the reporters jostled in for their perfect shot. His vulnerability was going to be all over the papers. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

_Grow up, Drakken._ It was bad. After all, nobody had ever written to the parole board on behalf of a convicted felon because he had cried when the sentence was read.

Once so close to being attainable, the image of himself on a throne was receding to the back of Drakken's mind. He couldn't see himself being fanned and fed grapes anymore. His true future swam before him in a blur of federal-pen orange and community showers. There was no Shego to rescue him - she'd have to bust herself out first, and even for Shego, that was going to be difficult. No henchmen to blame. Not even a comfy chair to flop into for sulking.

Was that all world tyrants ate, grapes?

Drakken's fingers dragged tormented trails down his cheeks. There was something inside him, something thick and dark and deadly, and no matter how much he threw up, he couldn't get rid of it. The evil he'd inoculated himself with to protect him from the injustice around him had forgotten its purpose and was now simply poisoning him.

He curved over, clutching his knees to steady himself. The shudders kept coming, down his limbs and up his throat. Drakken no longer cared if he regurgitated on all this nice shiny wood. So what if their varnish faded? There were much worse things that could happen to a person!

Like death by Diablo. Or life in prison. Sobs took over Drakken again.

He truly was a wretched creature. If he'd been the kind of person his mother thought he was, he would've been crying for the people he'd killed. But these tears were hot and selfish and cried only for him.

**~A few notes:**

***The police officer at the beginning is quoting Nani from _Lilo & Stitch_ with his, "Is _this_ what she needs?" line. Great movie. You should watch it. :)**

***And, also, Kim and Ron's exchange about her killing people is taken from an article I read in _Reader's Digest_ a long time ago. A pilot couldn't stop his plane from crash-landing; he could only try to do it in the safest way possible. When he found out people had died in the landing, he said, "I killed people," to which the reply he got was, "No, you didn't. You saved people." Amazing perspective. And it'll come up later on - but that's getting ahead of myself.**

**Thanks again to everyone who read!~**


	12. Last Summer

**~HUGE thanks to all my reviewers and followers! No life-or-death stuff this time around. ~**

**Him**

"There are many prodigal sons

On our city streets they run"

-Leeland

When Dr. Drakken woke up that morning with an itch all up and down his chest, he did what any groggy intellectual would do: he scratched it, jagged fingernails catching on the fabric of his jammies.

It didn't budge the way a rash would, and Drakken couldn't recall spilling any chemical concoction down his shirt in the past few days. Nor was it the pump of awakening from a nightmare, or the heartburn that resulted from too much pizza before bed, or even the drive to conquer the world. It was an agitation that wound him up tight, and it could only be because today was a special day.

Drakken stretched the sleepy kinks from his back and got himself into a sitting position, sending the night away with one last yawn. His hands fumbled on his nightstand for his spare glasses. Remembering to take out his contacts last night - three cheers for Drakken! - had left his vision fuzzy, and that was scary when you stored Doomsday devices in just about every room of your living quarters.

His hands shook as he put the glasses on, and when his toes found the floor, they bunched up under him, ready to carry him away to the next thing whether Drakken wanted to go or not. Maybe it was just spring - make that _summer _- fever. Drakken could hear the air conditioner groaning as it labored to blast out a sinister chill over the day's inherent heat.

Hmm. Special day in summer. Drakken propped a fist under his chin and brought his eyebrow down to ponder that. It had been quite a while since he'd taken any interest in the date - but how much time had passed since his disastrous Mother's Day? Had to have been weeks. Was it the 4th of July already?

Drakken rubbed his hands together in sheer delight. Ooh, he _loved _the 4th of July! Even on a Caribbean island that wasn't technically part of the United States, it was a good excuse to blow things up.

Giddily, Drakken dashed to the window and peeled back a strip of the blackout shade. The sky above was what a weatherman would call "partly cloudy" (or "partly sunny," depending on how optimistic he was), grayish-white wisps floating lazily across it. Not the perfect backdrop for grand evil, but nice enough for a special day.

Whatever that day was.

Scientific curiosity, as always, got the better of Drakken. He tugged the rest of the shade off, teeth grinding at the "squeeeeeaaaallllk" it produced, and heaved open the window, which creaked like an old man just waking up. Drakken tried to ignore the fact that it was pretty much exactly the sound he'd made a few minutes before. Instead, he leaned his head out the window to catch a whiff of the sea air, to feel the salt spray on his lips, to gauge the temperature.

Was it the 4th of July? Was it? Was it? Huh?

Nah. The air was warm, but not that sticky July heat. Had to still be June.

For some reason, the itch flared again. Scratching did no good, despite Drakken curling his fingers in precisely the right way to give his nails the Maximum Efficiency that guaranteed no skin irritant stood a chance. He closed the window and squished the screen back on, smoothing down the vexing pockets of air that bubbled up. There was something fussy about this itch, and it made Drakken want to -

He didn't know. Vacuum the floor. Tidy up the bookshelves. Surgically fix his underbite, which all that teeth-shifting probably hadn't helped.

Weird. Weird, weird, weird.

Drakken skittered his way out to the kitchen. To the coffeepot, where he hopped from one foot to another while he waited for his brew to warm up. Shego wasn't there to tell him he didn't _need _caffeine with that much inexplicably-nervous energy already in him. Drakken hadn't seen her since the day before yesterday, which told him it had to be Sunday.

A knot formed over the itch, and Drakken was lousy with untying knots. Most people probably lived for the weekends, but he just grew so _lonesome_ without Shego around. He would have to come up with a new evil plan soon, he decided.

_Summer schemes, summer schemes_, Drakken mused as he transferred the contents of the pot into his favorite mug, stirring in several creams and more than a few sugars. Black coffee was so gross. Brown was better. Red meant something was wrong with your coffeemaker.

Whatever color it was, it burned against the raw spot that was now spreading throughout his entire thorax. Drakken pressed CPR-hands against his chest in case he was entering cardiac arrest, but no other symptoms developed. Still, there would clearly be no scheming until he figured out what it was that was making his body leap around inside itself like a whole colony of jumping beans, which weren't actually beans any more than koala bears were actually bears. . .

_Okay, think, Drakken!_ Drakken's fingertips flew to his temples and felt a great roaring that left migraines in the dust. What could he do? How could he find the answer? Where did he start?

Well, he could always perform a complete physical exam on himself right at this instant. Hook his brain up to an EEG machine - did he even have one of those anymore, or had he sold it to make space for the Mutate-O-Matic? Or check the date on the calender.

Yes! "See how brilliant I am?" Drakken said proudly. It took him a couple of seconds to realize there was no lippy sidekick there to gloat to. As hard it was to live with Shego, living _without _her was infinitely worse.

Whatever. Drakken padded his feet across the kitchen floor, smooth and slick beneath his bare toes, to squint at his calender - the puppies-and-kittens one Shego always made fun of. (It had been on sale, okay?) It was still on June.

Drakken ran his finger down the neat rows of squares that left him feeling more unkempt than ever. Had they done Flag Day already? Yes, they had, because he remembered observing the day by designing the flag of his empire. Bright blue with two drawings of laser beams on either side, pulling your attention right to the giant picture of him emblazoned on it, complete with a crown and a smirk, two things he had yet to ever achieve - at least according to Shego - maybe he should have added a few flashes of green so she wouldn't think he had forgotten her contributions -

Whoa. No. Focus on today. Drakken gripped the sides of his head and shook his brain back into place. Sunday. Sunday after Flag Day.

His finger came to a shaking stop on the appropriate square. The one that read, _Father's Day_.

After that, Drakken's brain ceased to function entirely.

Time didn't heal wounds. It salted them.

Drakken went down, straight to the ground, and flung his hands out to see if there was anything he could latch on to. When he found a chair leg, he clutched it tight. Now he knew why he couldn't scratch the itch in his chest, why it was even worse than one on that spot on your back you could never reach. It was on the inside.

_Breathe. Breathe. Breathebreathebreathebreathe._

Easier said than done. Unlike _installation of hypersonic electronic insulation_, which was easier done than said, like he'd found out last week.

What was he even _talking _about?

Drakken hugged that chair leg and concentrated on joining rational thoughts together. Something had gone hollow and lacking inside him, to the point where he wasn't sure he could stand up without help. His head throbbed with pain and memories.

Richard Lipsky. Called such, coldly, because he was a father only in the technical sense. Even now, as Drakken's mind flashed with the man's clench-fisted silhouette, he had the urge to cower in the nearest corner.

So it was all still there, the stuff Drakken had thought he'd gotten rid of. He'd buried it alive under ancient layers of rock and evil, and now it was clawing its way out. And the malformed memories bodily slammed into him, harder than Kim Possible _ever _had:

A face that wouldn't come into focus glaring at him, a voice he couldn't quite recall snapping his name. Harsh, angry touch. Annoyance in every movement. The words, "Your mother and I need some time apart," dreaded when they should have been a relief. The endless emptiness afterward.

The itch simmered until Drakken was on the verge of ripping off his own skin. Even the silk of his pajamas brushing softly against that skin wasn't soothing anymore. Nothing was.

Drakken fought his way to his feet and leaned against a wall as his throat closed off all through traffic. The kitchen phone was at eye level. Should he call Mother? If she'd figured out what today was, too, she must have been suffering as badly as he was.

This was not a comforting thought. Drakken grew squirmy. He'd never known how to handle his mother's tears, so he would just stand there feeling awkward every single time. That was not what he needed today.

Ooohhh, the _guilt_. But he wasn't just being selfish, not when it came to Mother. He wasn't strong enough to hold it together today, and hearing Drakken's sobs would only upset Mother further.

Upsetting Mother had never been an option. It wasn't her punishment Drakken feared; it was her worry. (Well, okay, he feared _both _- but especially the latter.) That was why he'd never told her the truth about why he was coming home from school with bruises and torn-apart clothes. Mother already had plenty of single-parent stress that was turning her pretty red hair gray at an alarming rate, and he couldn't add to it.

Besides, what could she have done anyway? Carl Thompson and his gang already thought he was a Mama's boy/sissy/nerd. If Mother had gone after them with her purse, that wouldn't have exactly helped.

A father would have had more clout with them. At the very least, a father could have taught him how to fight back. Signed him up for karate lessons or something.

Drakken sighed. There was so much Richard had never taught him. How to drive, how to shave, what to do when you were fifteen and saw a pretty girl and thought something you really didn't want to think. . . because you were fifteen and saw a pretty girl.

How to not have a psychotic break and become a supervillain.

That did it! Drakken could stay still no longer. He tore out of the kitchen, arms pumping furiously in front of him, legs churning a path up and down the floor, one long plank of dark, dark wood. Back and forth, bouncing off the walls, off the furniture, screaming like something out of a horror movie. Breath heaving, everything churning. Hurting. Hurting _bad_.

After what must have been hours - or at least a good twenty minutes - Drakken's body couldn't keep up with his wired heart anymore. He collapsed in a heap dangerously close to a shark tank and gasped for air.

Perhaps fate would smile upon him and Mother wouldn't even check her calender today. If that was the case, he surely didn't want to remind her. But as Drakken stood up and brushed the dust bunnies from his pajamas, he couldn't shake the heavy sense of being alone. Even in his own lair, surrounded by the projected menace he couldn't live up to right now, he was an outcast.

He headed for the kitchen, because his stomach was growling for something that would make it all go away. Coffee wasn't going to cut it, so he abandoned his mug. Even with the beagle and the tabby - was that what those patchwork-quilt cats were called, tabbies? - still frolicking, the calender looked hateful as a doom ray.

Drakken stuck his tongue out at it on his way to the refrigerator. Inside, he found a carton of Chunky Monkey ice cream and tore open drawers until he finally located a spoon.

Forget looking for a bowl. Drakken stood in the safe cold of the freezer and started frantically shoveling spoonfuls in. Man, he hadn't realized before how _hungry_ he was!

Drakken foraged in his brain for some spark of brilliance. But that was the worst part, he thought as he spooned and swallowed, spooned and swallowed, over and over again. Even if he _did _dream up a new plot, he wouldn't be granted a reasonable head start on it. Kim Possible would abandon her little family celebration and come to thwart him, because the girl had no manners whatsoever.

For that matter, neither did Drakken, building a Doomsday device on one of her days off, but teen heroines were _supposed_ to have manners. Mad scientists had no such obligations.

He'd come face-to-face with that injustice last Father's Day, as he'd worked on his Robo-Slug, a Drakken-masterpiece that would SLIME the world into submission! He'd left it alone for a mere five minutes, when his thirst for power had been upstaged by his thirst for a grape soda. And then, abruptly, his feet felt wet, and Drakken realized he'd been wearing the same socks for the past three days, so of course he'd had to go change them. . .

Feet dry and mouth moist, Drakken had skipped back to the kitchen, still sipping happily from his soda can. To his horror, the floor was strewn with mangled parts that had once powered the Robo-Slug. All that remained was the skeleton - slugs didn't even _have _skeletons! - and Kim Possible and her oaf of a friend were stripping that clean even as Drakken watched, clenching the can until it crumpled and bubbles foamed over.

He'd picked his way through the wreckage, so far from the intimidating pace he'd spent so many hours practicing. "Kim Possible!" He'd spit it at her, actually spit, globs of saliva and all. "What are _you _doing here? This is a holiday! You, young lady, are CHEATING!"

Kim Possible had barely glanced at him. "If evil doesn't take a vacation, then good can't, either." She rolled her eyes as if _she_ were the one having a bad day. "So thank you for that, Drakken."

"You're welcome," Drakken replied sullenly. The knowledge that he had spoiled Kim Possible's perfect day was the only thing that kept him from splitting down the middle.

And then the buffoon tore him right in half.

"Yeah, and what about _you_?" The kid had tilted his big head, ill-proportioned on his skinny neck. "Why aren't you spendin' time with _your_ dad?"

It was fascinating, the visceral reaction the body had to such thoughtless reminders. Drakken remembered wailing and collapsing to the ground and possibly curling up into the fetal position. Through the blur of trying not to cry, he'd heard Kim Possible whisper, "We better go, Ron."

He waited for it to be accompanied by that perky little bounce he hated so much, carrying her back into her own little world. But her steps were as soft and gentle as the hand that, out of nowhere, rested on his shoulder.

Drakken peered upward, just to make sure he wasn't entering the hallucinatory stage of grief. Kim Possible was looking back at him, and someone must have stolen her flippancy. For once, her face showed no signs that she was getting a kick out of Drakken's suffering.

"Drakken," she'd said, like a vet talking to a nervous puppy. "Whatever happened - I'm sorry."

Drakken turned his entire body away from her so she wouldn't see his lip quiver. No more of that now.

Kim Possible had left then, which was probably for the best.

Because she'd shown Drakken sympathy, and he didn't especially feel like killing her that day.

If she showed up _today_, though, Drakken had a shiny new great white shark with her name on it. Well, not really - you couldn't write on a shark without placing yourself in mortal danger - but the point was, it was new and sharp-toothed and hadn't been tested yet. He was a mad scientist, not a _sad_ scientist, and it was time Kim Possible learned that he was no wimp!

Besides, he just couldn't bear the girl's infuriatingly good fortune right now. She even had a father who, for all his many personality flaws, loved her and cared for her. Not the dad from Corporate Hades.

Drakken licked a dribble of stray ice cream from his chin. The first couple of months, he hadn't even known they were related. He'd never considered the idea that James had settled down, started a family.

But once he saw them up next to each other, he could tell. Kim Possible only resembled James in the proud hold of her back, but the look James was giving her - such protective tenderness - could only have been from a father to a daughter.

Then all of that had gotten lost as Drakken had poured out his heart. Revenge forgotten for the moment. Palms turned upward. Eyes begging, _Please apologize - or I won't be able to stand it._

James had observed him coolly, jaw as pointy and angry as Shego's, decidedly un-wracked with guilt. There was never an apology, not ever.

And the Bebes picked then to revolt because they'd gotten too smart. Everyone had laughed about how stupid Drakken was, which was very hurtful, and which Drakken saw no logic behind - how could a robot be smarter than its maker? Shouldn't that have been a sign that he, too, was too intelligent for his own good?

Kim Possible had sprung in to fight them, and the Bebes, being the fierce warriors Drakken had designed them to be, were on the verge of tearing her limb from limb. The buffoon was freaking out, pleading with someone to do something to save her, and Drakken had actually been considering it. After all, Kim Possible _had _just saved his life, and he'd never been in debt to a good guy before.

Unaware of the proper protocol, Drakken had let his gaze roam around the room, searching for the answer. And it landed on James, who was watching him in desperation. Palms turned upward. Eyes begging, _Please save my little girl - or I won't be able to stand it._

And so Drakken had refused.

For the first time, Drakken had been able to hurt James worse than if he'd killed him. And, since the man had shown no remorse in the face of his old college chum's suffering, it was the way he deserved to be hurt. How Drakken felt about Kim Possible had been irrelevant. All he wanted was for her high-and-mighty father to finally know what pain was.

Drakken's tongue grew so hot, he expected the ice cream to evaporate on it. But it stayed cool and smooth and safe as it slid down his throat, down and down until he could breathe again. Breathe and realize something.

When he'd mind-controlled those senior citizens down in Florida, he'd inadvertently been introduced to Kim Possible's grandmother. "Nana" - as Kim called her; how cloying was that? - had come alone. A widow. Which meant James's father had died sometime after Drew Lipsky went out of his life.

A dangerous softness wiggled Drakken's bottom lip.

He shook it off. That must have stunk, that must have really stunk, but at least James had known his father wasn't _choosing _to leave him. And the man had still been there to guide James through childhood and adolescence right into adulthood. Puberty was pure torture when you had only a squeamish mother and an uncle you weren't that close to as your only resources. No, it couldn't compare to what Drakken had gone through. Was still going through.

Last year, he'd picked up the pieces of his Robo-Slug and his heart and managed to hold it together the rest of the day by imagining what deliciously evil things he could create with all this scrap metal. But when he'd woken up in the night and wandered into the kitchen for a snack, he'd wound up eating - and eating - and eating until all he could do was lie there and groan, reaching for one last donut because something inside him was still empty and he needed to fill it up. Shego had found him curled up on the bathroom floor the next morning, praying for death.

"Are you decent?" she'd hollered, banging on the door.

"I'm awful!" Drakken had yelled in reply.

To which Shego had muttered, "If you're naked, I'm gonna murder you," and shoved her way in. She'd taken one look at him and the empty Twinkie wrapper still stuck to his foot and made a noise of unmistakable disgust down in her throat.

Yeah, he knew. He was disgusting. Stupid old Drakken-of-last-year, who'd eaten himself sick because he couldn't face the day without something sweet in his mouth -

Wait, wait, wait. What was he doing now?

Drakken blinked down into the ice cream container, which seemed several levers lower than it had fifteen minutes ago. It was cold inside his tummy.

Hoo-boy. Drakken rested his palm against the slight ache in his midsection. It hadn't reached the point of visible bulging, but it felt it a little. Full in the stomach, but hollow in the chest.

He clattered his spoon to the floor in shame. And then there was nothing to do but sigh and put the ice cream away and walk out to the living room and crawl into his Thinking Chair, which just so happened to also be his Dealing-With-Minor-Indigestion Chair.

The sun insisted on mocking his misery by spilling its happy rays through the window. The blackout shade must have lost its stickiness and fallen down. It was so picturesque, Drakken wanted to obliterate it. Just perfect for a cat to come and lay down for its nap in.

Or a slightly-too-full-mad scientist. . .

Gears began to grind in his genius brain. The sunbeam beckoned, and Drakken felt fat and lazy enough to go lie down in it.

In a moment of weakness, he did, folding over himself in a comforting curl, fingers set to massage the swollen skin of his belly. It was more the memories than the fudge and marshmallows that were tumbling around in there.

Drakken had gone over all the facts in his mind hundreds, if not thousands, of times. Richard Lipsky had been a ruthless businessman who had picked work over family. He'd had no patience for life's little distractions, particularly the kind with thick, smudgy glasses whose chemical experiments sometimes left stains on the carpet.

And he'd wanted an athlete instead of a scientist.

There was no denying that, and it made the heavy-bellied urpiness worse. Drakken had deliberately blocked the images of Richard clapping an oversized football helmet on his undersized head and dragging him into a game with his much-larger cousin. Richard rolling his eyes as puny Drew fell down again and again. Richard beaming with pride as Eddy scored a goal or a touchdown or whatever those things were known as. Clapping Eddy on the back as a greeting, declaring that the kid got bigger every time he saw him; what were they feeding him? Barely glancing back over his shoulder long enough to glimpse his own scrawny son.

His father's face, turning toward him, every time reading, _Why can't you be more like him?_

What would his six-foot-one, football-playing, dessert-skipping father think if he could see him now? Drakken could hear him now, saying, "You'll _be _a Chunky Monkey if you keep this up."

That was it! Drakken shot to his feet with sheer determination. A mad scientist without a plan, though, was like a ship without a rudder. Drakken wobbled slightly in his stance, the way he always did when his vision of himself as world ruler seemed broken, as if he were viewing it through shattered glass, like it was now. The fawning devotees who had nothing better to do than fan him were out of focus - all thanks to what he couldn't imagine.

A man's arms wrapping around him, giving him a hug and proclaiming his son the greatest genius to ever draw up a blueprint.

Of course Drakken couldn't imagine that, because he sure as heck didn't _want _it. Even the thought of physical contact with another man gave him a decidedly unvillainous case of the willies. The female touch Drakken so often had to endure was bad enough. If anyone's fingers so much as brushed his shoulder, Drakken would have had to scowl and jerk away from them.

But right now, Drakken wished he had someone to shake off. Because that would have meant that they were willing to try.

Drakken flung himself into his Thinking Chair, knee denting Jack Hench's Villain Directory. Directory. Phone numbers. He could call someone.

He opened the book to study his options, and with each name he read, he felt his shoulders sag down further. Professor Dementor, a bad enough rival to be classified as an enemy. DNAmy, the woman who had broken his heart. Shego, who responded to any question about her personal life with a plasma bolt to the nose.

Jack Hench's group of villains had always reminded Drakken a bit of that one clique in middle school. Of course it was hard for someone like him to break in - someone who couldn't afford to buy HenchCo products, who got queasy at the thought of actually _watching_ someone meet their end, who was still smarting over events he was more than three decades removed from.

Still, Drakken mused, together they probably all had enough daddy-issues to fill a support group. Junior was very likely the only one who had anything to brag about in the father department -

Senior. Drakken forced his lungs to relax so he wouldn't hyperventilate, turn two shades bluer, and keel over. He'd done that before. Not fun. Now what was he thinking abo - oh! Senior!

Senior was everything Drakken wasn't: rich, handsome, well-respected, dignified. And not so attached to his evil plans that he unraveled when they did. But the old man had always been decent to him.

The only logical conclusion was that Drakken had to call Senior. Not because of what today was. Not because of something that had happened thirty-two years ago. He was just lonely and needed to hear a kindly voice.

Yes. A good plan. Finally!

Drakken picked up the phone. Its businesslike grayness suddenly irritated him, and he punched in the numbers as hard as he could. It was the experience of a lifetime, Senior talking to you in warm crackles, and it got closer with every ring.

But the person who said, "Hola, baby," upon picking up had no accent. His voice was sly and smarmy, so unlike either of the Seniors.

Meh-huh? Who was this jerk? Uneasiness rippled its way up Drakken's spine. He'd never trusted guys that called him "babe." A new element had been introduced to the test tube, and Drakken couldn't be certain how the original mixture would respond.

Which was why it was so important that he mind his manners, Drakken realized, applauding himself for thinking on his feet. If he was speaking to the Seniors' new secretary or something - although Drakken got the impression he would have made a much better used-car salesman - and he was rude to him, Senior would never give Drakken the time of day again.

"Hello," Drakken said. "May I speak to Senor Senior, Senior, please?"

The man gave a laugh. What Drakken guessed was a laugh. It sounded more like he was spitting out a mouthful of pointy things. "Sorry, nobody here by that name."

Okay, he tried being polite. "Who the heck are you?" Drakken demanded.

"I - " there was just enough of a pause for an eyebrow-wiggle - "am Vinnie Wheeler."

At that point, Drakken would have chalked it up to a wrong number, blushed over how his brain scrambled digits, and hung up - except for the harshness in the dismissal. It was as though this man had no time for Drakken, and Drakken wanted to annoy him a little longer.

"Peachy," Drakken muttered through his own tight lips, now the consistency of barbed wire. He could beat this man at introductions with his tongue in traction, and he was eager to try. "_I _am Dr. Drakken!" He rolled the letters out wide, kept them suspended for a minute before letting them drop.

The pause was too long this time. "Oh," Vinnie said. "Never heard of you."

Mnnnnngh. The blood vessels in Drakken's face expanded, staining his cheeks pink. "_Only _the world's foremost mad genius," he explained. "On the brink of world conquest, no less! I'm Senior's friend."

Only once the statement was out of his mouth did Drakken remember that supervillains didn't have friends. _He _didn't have friends, unless you counted the henchmen and Shego, and they were more like family. Allies were acceptable; friends were a liability.

Yet, for some reason, Drakken had been proud to call himself Senior's friend.

"Nope," Vinnie said. "Still not ringing any bells." His sound waves could have been smirking over the line.

There were several doom rays this man should have been on the wrong end of.

"And my sidekick, Shego, is sweet on Junior!" Drakken had no clue where _that _information had come from. Perhaps some lone neuron in his brain that he thought he'd denied out of existence.

Ew.

"Ahhh, yes, Shego. I _have_ heard of her." Oil seemed to soak Vinnie's every word and drip into the phone. It was a chemical travesty to which even Junior's whine was preferable.

How could you have heard of Shego without hearing of _him_? She was just the sidekick! The amazing, jaw-droppingly talented sidekick, to be sure, but still just essentially the sidekick.

Yes, bringing up Shego had been a bad idea. Time to change the subject. Every excess bite of ice cream was beginning to churn. "Well, I've never heard of _you_, either," Drakken responded with a sniff.

_Take that, Vinnie Whatever-Your-Name-Was!_

"Me?" Drakken could almost hear Vinnie's eyes widening in fake surprise. The extremely low probability that this little creep had outscored Drakken on the ACT was reassuring, but Vinnie was obviously cunning and shrewd. Two qualities that, despite his intense research into, Drakken had to admit rarely showed up in his field studies. "I'm an accountant."

Drakken knew a sneer would do him no good over the phone, but he felt his mouth curling anyway. He gathered up all the villain-meanness he had managed to accumulate over the years and injected it all into the scoff, "A bean counter?"

"You might say that." Vinnie didn't sound the slightest bit rattled. "But I've really come up in the world lately."

Sweat began to form in the lines of Drakken's palms. This had all the marks of bad news. "Since when?" he shot back.

"Since the Seniors signed their fortune, their island, and all of their possessions over to me."

Drakken actually took a step backward, holding the phone out in front of him with a shaky hand. "Liar!" he yelled over his sudden, sharp fear. "Senior's not stupid enough to turn all their wealth over to a poser like _you_!"

There was a smug grin in Vinnie's voice. "No, but Junior is."

Drakken couldn't argue with that.

He couldn't move, either. His thoughts alone were racing like hummingbirds on caffeine. Or maybe more like wasps, stinging him and leaving welts all over his brain. What? How? _Why_?

"You shove a couple of papers in front of the kid, and he'll sign them just to make you go away," Vinnie continued.

No, no, no to the fifteenth power. Had this man honestly - well, no, it was clear Vinnie Dealer or Wheeler or whatever did nothing honestly. But had he _really _conned poor idiotic Junior into signing over everything? Were the Seniors now as penniless as Junior was brainless?

Drakken pressed a clammy glove to his forehead as fever-like heat struck him. If that was true, the Seniors were gone. And they hadn't left a forwarding address.

Some emotion villains weren't supposed to have rent open inside him.

Drakken opened his mouth to calmly say, "That is so disgustingly unethical that even I, as a notorious supervillain, am appalled." But "GAAAAKCL!" came out instead.

Vinnie spit out another laugh. A distant laugh. The one people always used on Drakken, because they didn't understand caring enough about something for your eloquentication to dry up and blow away.

Selfishness would hurt much less, but for once Drakken couldn't reach it. It was pathetic of him. Why was his heart pumping away like this affected him? What had Senior ever done for Drakken?

Except treat him with respect. Even after he'd just watched Drakken upchuck on Dementor. That was nothing to cough at. Or sneeze or hiccup. One of those strange nasal-oral tics.

"You cannot do this," Drakken said, his voice fighting for the command he should have had over a slimy little accountant. "I'm going to call the authorities on you!"

"Oh, I don't think you will." Vinnie was so completely self-assured that Drakken hoped the ceiling collapsed on his head right this minute.

"And why not?" Drakken snarled. He ached inside, and he didn't think it was the ice cream.

"You're a supervillain, too, aren't you, Dr. Drakken?" Vinnie went into some fake-sympathetic tone.

"Ye-es." _Doy_, Shego would have added.

"Then you wouldn't really want to involve the police, would you?"

Drakken's fingers froze. Officers of the law, with their terrible blue caps and the uncomfortable handcuffs they always wore on their belts, were definitely not his friends. Cop shows weren't his cup of tea, either, but he'd seen enough of them to know that the one who made the 911 call got investigated, too.

And Drakken had a lot to hide and nothing to hide it behind.

CURSE THIS MAN!

"B - b - but - gggm - deehhh - the Seniors! You - you stole from them!" Drakken attempted a roar that died in his throat.

"Yes, I did," Vinnie said. Whined, actually, in a nasally imitation of how Drakken's own boom had splintered. "But, see, the Seniors have criminal records. You have one, too. _I _don't. Who are the police going to believe?"

The room appeared to tilt ninety degrees south. Drakken's legs went rubbery as it all sank it. There was nothing he could do to help the Seniors, not without bringing the law down on them and himself. Nothing. Absolutely nothing!

But he had to do _something_!

Fire behind his nasal cavities. "You are scum!" Drakken screamed into the phone. "You are a lying, cheating, two-timing _skunk_!"

Vinnie was silent, and Drakken didn't blame him. Part of him was afraid, too. He was used to grunting and shaking his fists in fits of temper - "tantrums" was how Shego referred to them. But this rage was truly out of control, and Drakken didn't know if he could ever reel it in.

Or would have wanted to.

"I know people like you; I know corporate shysters! You're all heartless punks whose only concern is how many people you can bleed dry, and hang their feelings!" The words scraped against Drakken's windpipe on their way out. "And then you sit there and look like respectable people while the rest of us rot in jail! Oh, I hate you, Richard! I _hate _you!"

"'Richard'?" Vinnie questioned from far away.

Then there was the drone of a dial tone, and Drakken was unsure which of them had hung up. He stuck his tongue out at the phone and pitched it into a pile of dirty lab coats in the corner, wringing his hands and pretending they were Vinnie Wheeler's neck.

Fiery energy wired itself around Drakken's entire body, but he had to shake his legs to convince himself that he wasn't sinking in quicksand. He was lost, adrift, like a baby whose umbilical cord had been yanked away before birth.

Luckily, the anger arrived before the tears. His eyes flickered around the room, burning, looking for something that would never be there.

"Why did you leave me?" he sputtered uselessly. "I _needed _you!"

And then he bolted off for his lab, ideas already on his fingers. If he didn't enslave the world soon, he might do something he would regret.

**Her**

". . . and it is so brilliant, they'll have to come up with a word even brillianter than 'brilliant' to describe it! And it'll be there in the dictionaries for all time: _Coined in honor of the genius world ruler, His Majesty, Dr. Drakken_! And - Kim Possible, are you even _listening_?"

"Working on it!" Kim Possible hollered back at her arch-nemesis. That was hard to do when you were trying to escape being pinned by a woman six inches taller than you and a lot heavier in muscle mass than she looked. Especially since Drakken was so busy with the self-congratulatory nonsense that he hadn't given her any info that would help her bring him down yet.

Kim dodged one of Shego's kicks to the femur, curled into a ball, and rolled out of her way. "So what's this _so-called_ brilliant invention of yours, Drakken?" she asked.

Shego's three-foot mane of gleaming hair blocked Kim's view of Drakken, but she could hear his ego bristling. "None other than the Pyro Mindwipe!" he cried.

Catchy. Kim waited for it to get stupid.

"Once darkness falls, I will launch it from this platform that I oh-so-cleverly designed myself!" Kim could imagine Drakken making those sweeping gestures with his arms that would inevitably knock something over. "No need to tell me how ingenious it is; I already know. When the Pyro Mindwipe explodes, particles of mind-control serum will rain down over the entire Earth." Harsh laughter thundered out. "As soon as people inhale it, they will form my army of brainless drones, whose only thought is to serve the great and glorious Dr. Drakken!"

Okay. Despite all the crazy-person stuff running around inside Drakken, that plan was definitely better than his most recent failure: stuffing great white sharks into a homemade tornado and launching it up the Golf Coast in the hopes of terrorizing the populace. He'd called "Sharknado." Puh-lease. Sounded like some lame Sci-Fy Channel movie.

But this - this had potential. For a moment, Kim had trouble coming up with a suitable insult.

Until she looked up at Drakken. His face had settled into a smirk that added two inches to his geeky underbite chin.

Whenever Kim's eyes caught that smirk, they couldn't HELP but roll.

She might as well have rapped him across the mouth. Drakken's own eyes drooped at the corners into sad dark pools. There was no trace of the you-don't-have-to-tell-me-because-I-already-know. "I read the basic idea in a book," he added, much more feebly than before. "But I modified it to be even better, so it's all mine!"

Kim felt a smile twitch at her lips. Great. Now if she could just get Shego off her tail, she'd be able to free Ron from that beam he'd managed to get himself trapped behind, and it would be two against two again.

"I know you think you're going to find some kind of loophole, Kim Possible. But you won't!" Drakken took several steps toward him, but he didn't get any closer than a foot. He was still more scared of her than she was of him.

And no WONDER. Drakken was half puffed-up chest and empty threats. The rest of him wasn't competent enough to even be worth a shiver. Even his next two sentences - "I've got something special planned for the two of you. Mind control just isn't good enough for you." - didn't do much to spike Kim's heart rate.

The thought of everyone she loved being forced to follow Drakken's warped orders, though - _that_ was kind of a big. Kim gave Shego a sharp kick, harder than she'd intended, and watched as the girl flew all the way back across the room. Shego's head collided with the opposite wall, and she slumped to the ground. Drakken dropped the attack-dog routine and started to yip like a terrier.

With both of the villains stunned, Kim took the opportunity to help poor Rufus out with the beam he'd been struggling to lift for the past twenty minutes. The splintered wood was, like Shego, sturdier than it looked, but Kim managed to hoist it up enough for Ron to wriggle out.

"Before I destroy you, though, Kim Possible," Drakken began, and before Kim could even ask how exactly he planned to do _that_, what with Shego practically KO'd, he continued with, "I have to ask you a question."

"Oh, yeah. And what's that?" Kim said, doing a slow pan of the room. The Pyro Mindwipe wasn't going to be easy to locate in a room so stocked with fireworks it looked like the tent down by Middleton Elementary.

"Senor Senior, Sr. was cheated out of his fortune by a dishonest accountant." Drakken's tongue worked, as if it were tasting the cafeteria mystery meat. "Did you, or did you not thwart his attempt to steal it back?"

"Yeah, I did," Kim said, deliberately blanking her puzzlement. And she'd felt like a jerk doing it, because Senior was the only respectable villain she knew. He was just as likely to invite you in for tea as drop you to your death. Who could rip off a guy like that? "Revenge is understandable, but it's still illegal, Drakken."

"You teenagers!" Drakken exploded. His voice got lost somewhere between Mickey Mouse and James Earl Jones. "You think everything is so black and white!"

Two months ago, Kim would have come back with, "Sometimes it is!" She was kind of bugged that she couldn't do it now without feeling like she was lying to herself.

And, uh, why would Drakken care about any of this to begin with? Kim knew Junior kind of had a thing for Shego, which was just about sick and wrong, but she hadn't thought Drakken had ever had anything to do with them. So what was bringing on the straining neck veins and the clenched fists? Since when did Drakken give a rip about anyone besides himself?

Since he tossed that glance over his shoulder at the slowly-getting-up Shego. Her usual smooth glide to her feet was more like a drunk's stagger. Kim could see her eyes from all the way across the room, though, too smooth and focused with anger to be suffering a concussion.

"Hey, Dr. D!" Ron waved his arms in the air. "Why don't you let somebody else talk for a change?"

Drakken's mouth clamped shut, out of sheer surprise, Kim was sure, but he continued to fix Kim with that you-can't-know-anything-if-you-haven't-lived-long-enough-to-have-an-old-man-back-like-me look.

Kim jumped right into the gap of silence Drakken had left and started talking again. "Once Senior was arrested, I did some digging to see if his story checked out."

Drakken's cheekbones seemed to tighten, but Kim didn't feel guilty over that one. Senior wasn't exactly a pathological liar, but he wasn't above twisting the truth when it suited him. And, unlike Drakken, he didn't wear the evidence all over his face.

"And it did," Kim went on. "So I went to see him - in jail - and told him I would help him take legal steps to getting his fortune back, if he wanted my help."

"You - you did that?" Drakken gaped.

"For the Seniors?" Shego added. She switched off the nastiness for almost thirty seconds. That was the closest she came to respect.

"Well, _yeah_." Kim knew the hair-toss was probably a bit too smug, but their shock was so satisfying. "I'm NOT some kind of do-gooder robot or whatever you think I am."

Drakken grabbed one wrist in his other hand and twisted it. "And he did? He got it back? Senior's back at his private island compound with all his money?"

Those same laughably thick lashes blinked over what Kim could now see was a film of moisture. Kim worked on not going bug-eyed. "Yep. Except for what he used to hire a lawyer and all that," she said.

Air hissed out of Drakken, blowing the scent of bubble-gum toothpaste in Kim's direction. "All right, then," he said, almost to himself. "Because you did that - and because you told me - I will not be destroying you." His smile trembled at the edges. "I'll simply mind-control you with the rest of the herd."

That was gratitude for you. Kim had been mind-controlled by Drakken once before, and it was completely disgusting. Wearing Shego's way-out-of-style jumpsuit had been the LEAST of it. "Actually, Drakken," she mused, stepping sideways so that Shego had to swerve to get nearer, "I think I'd rather be dead than under your control."

Drakken's cocky grin went crooked. "That can be arranged, too," he said, but his words didn't have that drooled-over sound to them. It was like he was just reciting his expected lines.

What _was_ the man's ish?

With Shego still regaining her balance, though, the atmosphere wasn't as charged. Kim stared at Drakken, trying to see past the blue skin and the stitches scarred into his cheek. _There's a person in there,_ Mom had said. One who had enough sympathy for the Seniors to spare Kim's life for helping them. Maybe she could draw it out. . .

"No, what do you really want, Drakken? To talk about your feelings?" Kim asked, surprising herself with her almost total lack of sarcasm.

Drakken's quirky little face twisted into a knot so bewildered, it was all Kim could do not to laugh. His fingertips tapped together, and Kim heard his breathing get louder and more unsteady. Dangerously close to vulnerable, he peered back at her and furrowed his eyebrow. His mouth opened -

Just as Kim's eyes landed on what had to be the Pyro Mindwipe, Shego's body landed on _her_.

It was smaller than she'd expected it to be, Kim thought as she turned her head to the side just enough so Shego's first blow landed inches from her left ear. The thing was only about a foot long, and it quivered because the serum had to be compressed way tight in there. And it was the only firework pointed straight up in the air, _and _the only one with "Muah-hah-ha!" scrawled in what seemed to be chalk on the side. Unless Drakken had caught on to the art of deception in the last few weeks, Kim was counting on a bingo.

What Kim saw through the green flames stiffened her resolve. Drakken was angling his body toward Ron, actually giving off big-and-strong vibes next to Kim's scrawny little friend. _She _wasn't afraid of Drakken anymore, but Ron still was, and it was obvious even to Drakken. He was definitely going to be playing that.

Drakken rubbed his hands together in that way that Kim always meant to tell him made him look more like he was warding off pneumonia than preparing to conquer the world. "Two minutes to launch!" he cried happily.

"Okay, question." Ron stuck his hand up. "How are you gonna launch it, exactly?"

His question only amped up Drakken's smugness. "The ceiling's on hinges," he explained. "I shall open them and release the rocket on the unsuspecting citizens of Earth!"

"Ah." Ron gave him an approval-nod. "Good idea. Hey, I bet you get a really good view of the fireworks that way, too!"

Kim smiled a bit to herself. The fate of the entire free world was at stake, yet Ron still found it in him to appreciate the glistening sky.

The glove-claws paused over Kim's face just long enough to give her a stomach-jumping jolt of adrenaline. But she wasn't going to grant Shego's wish of letting it torture her. Kim sprang forward, grabbing Shego's wrist, and pushed Shego's hand, plasma and all, back into her own face.

It was almost never that Shego showed pain, but the squawk that came from her was two octaves higher than healthy. Kim would decide later whether or not to feel sorry for her. Right now, she squirted her body out from under Shego's and took advantage of her head start by barreling toward Ron and towing him along toward the fireworks display in one cobwebby corner.

Drakken raised one foot, turned sideways, and looked around the room as if he couldn't figure out where to put it down. He began his familiar windup with, "Shego! Get them!"

"Sheesh, _un momento_, okay, Doc?" Shego pressed two slender fingers to her forehead. "I've still got a bit of a wall hangover going on here."

To Kim's surprise, Drakken's own glare faded, to be replaced by something almost tender. He squatted down on his knees beside his sidekick and asked, "Are you all right?" A first-grader in baritone.

"Don't be stupid - go get them yourself!" The seethe in Shego's voice hadn't gone down a notch.

Unfortunately, Kim didn't get to watch Drakken's cheeks go pink. She ducked down and quickly located the Pyro Mindwipe next to an identical-in-size glitter launcher.

_Glitter Launcher?_ Man, Drakken went as over-the-top with holidays as Ron did.

Kim turned the Pyro Mindwipe over in her hands. Rats. No tiny control panel on the bottom for Rufus to disable. The controls must have been on the launchpad's computer itself. And Kim couldn't set THAT to self-destruct the way she usually did. Any explosion might catch the Mindwipe's fuse.

Could be tricky. Kim closed her eyes, and her mind filled with the images of the people in the valley below Drakken's suburban lair. People she'd never met, but every one of them was someone's mom, someone's dad, someone's Ron, someone's Monique, someone's Tweebs, someone's Barkin, even someone's Bonnie. She had a duty to protect them from every villain.

No matter how bad HE was at HIS job.

That determination powered Kim; it gave her a plan. She squared her shoulders and let her eyes open. There was no room for error.

As soon as she'd thought the word "error," Kim glanced right at Ron and kind of wanted to slap herself for it. Drakken had him backed against the wall like the grade-school bully he was. The little brat must have caught on that intimidating Kim herself was a lost cause.

Ron was holding his own pretty well, though. He was chewing Drakken out, mouth going at the same rate as Drakken's, matching him squeak for boom. And Kim could tell by the sly flickers across Ron's face that he was working out a plan of his own.

Rufus crawled out of his secret-weapon place in Ron's pocket and leaped down to the floor, claws clacking on the laminated finish. Drakken had his focus so completely on Ron, with the occasional eye-flick toward Kim, that he didn't notice Rufus scurrying up his own leg until the naked mole rat clamped his teeth around Drakken's belt and tugged it off.

Drakken's backbone stiffened into a frozen pole. One hand reached down and immediately grabbed his pants, which was a good thing. They were already dragging at the barely-there waist.

_And NOBODY wants to see that_, Kim thought with a lip-curl.

Drakken had to keep that one-handed grip on his waistband, which slowed his skitter even more as he took off after Rufus, one arm flailing helplessly at the air. It also bonked him square into Shego, who had just arisen from the ground, sending them both back down. Their groans were so similar, it was almost hilarious.

While the two villains peeled themselves up, Drakken inspecting each limb as if he were expecting to find it shattered, Kim had just enough time to pull Ron aside and whisper her plan into his ear. He nodded, shot her a thumb's-up, and made for the opposite side of the room. Drakken skittered after him on bird legs.

Kim ripped the labels off the Mindwipe and the glitter launcher and hastily stuck them back on, pretending not to hear Shego's just-this-side-of-control strides toward her. She made sure the labels hung slightly off center, for that sloppy rush-job look.

"Am I interrupting something, Kimmy?"

Kim stared up at a slightly flattened mane of hair and a form that reminded her of a wounded tiger - all the more deadly to make up for her grace being downgraded. It was Bonnie's fallen-from-the-top-of-the-cheerleader-pyramid face.

Times a hundred.

Kim stuffed the Mindwipe into her pocket, hoped it was as indestructible as Drakken had bragged on it being, and tackled Shego halfheartedly. That was still enough to land a few well-deserved kicks to Shego's lower half, though. This had to feel real, after all - but Kim had to lose.

It wasn't something she was used to doing.

In the background, Drakken continued to chase Rufus in a circle before finally getting the idea to stomp down on the belt, jerking Rufus to a halt. Kim flinched as she watched the little guy bounce back across the floor, and it gave her the perfect opportunity to fake dodging one of Shego's punches a little too late.

Shego stood over Kim with perfect poise, grinding her arm into the ground with one foot. The tiger had clearly brought down her prey as she yanked the Mindwipe from Kim's pocket. Shego's sickening smile just made Kim more eager for the moment where it all went down the tubes.

Drakken reappeared, tying the belt around what there was of his wispy middle. One pant leg was hiked up way too far, revealing a knee that reminded Kim of a grapefruit. "Finally!" he snapped. "The Pyro Mindwipe is back in the right hands! Well, the _wrong _ones. . . "

Right on cue, Ron started to laugh - incredibly loud snorts, even for him.

Drakken's ponytail straightened in suspicion. The big eyes got bigger; the wide mouth opened wider. "What exactly is so humorous, buffoon?" he spat.

"Noth - nothing," Ron snickered. He gave Kim a significant glance.

That boy wouldn't be winning any Oscars anytime soon. But it was good enough for Drakken, who was instantly at Ron's side, fist under Ron's nose. "You tell me what's going on THIS MOMENT!" he screamed.

"All right!" Kim got the feeling Ron's yelp didn't need to be forced. "Uh, KP switched the labels on the Pyro Mindwipe and the glitter launcher when you weren't lookin'."

Kim moaned a "Ro-on!" she'd had a bit too much practice with and watched that slide over Drakken's face. He looked down at the Mindwipe, cradled in his arms like a deformed baby, and his eyebrow loomed like a storm cloud over his eyes.

"You thought you could pull one over on me, didn't you, Kim Possible?" Drakken shoved the Mindwipe back into Kim's chest, which was already warm with the approaching victory. "Well, I caught your wool before you pulled it over my eyes! I! Am! Smarter! Than! You! Give! Me! Credit! For!"

His arrogance was belted smoothly into place by the desperation, spewing from every exclamation point. Shego's squeeze at Kim's wrist spoke a louder threat. The hair wasn't too flattened for a toss.

Hinges squealing, the ceiling split open to a royal-blue, star-scattered sky over the dip of the valley. There was a city down there, full of innocent people. People who were safe now.

Still cackling like a creep, Drakken retrieved the glitter launcher from the shelf and positioned it on the launchpad. Kim strained against Shego's hold, still effecting an oh-no-oh-please-no on her face, as Drakken burst out with "BEHOLD! THE DAWNING OF THE ERA OF DR. DRAKKEN!" and slammed a dainty finger onto the button.

The firework whistled its way up into the air, going perfectly with the thrill rising in Kim's chest. With a bang they could have heard in New Jersey, the rocket exploded.

Raining sparkly confetti down over Drakken's lair.

_Annndd. . . WIN. _

Shego's reaction was priceless. She could have watched the mouth contort, the eyes roll to the ceiling, the chin sharpen in disdain, for the rest of the night.

Drakken. . . not so much. If anything, his reaction was even better - he grunted like a dying hog and actually appeared to rip out a few handfuls of hair. It just wasn't the kind of thing you wanted popcorn for.

Kicking bad guy tail was one of Kim's favorite pastimes, but with all his superweapons out of reach, Drakken seemed like that last kid to get picked in gym class. That was such an easy victory it almost didn't count.

"Time to go!" Kim grabbed Ron's arm and made fast tracks for the door. Behind her, Shego's groan wafted up to meet the glitter coming down.

And Drakken got it together enough to cry, "Kim Possible! You think you're all that. . . Oooh, _shiny_!"

Yeah. Having him for an archenemy was more entertaining than having cable.

"Happy 4th to you, too, Drakken!" Kim called back over her shoulder. She didn't see any harm in wishing him well AFTER the scheme had been shot down.

"That - was - badical!" Ron smacked his palm against Kim's. "Ya got the actual Brainwipe Thingy?"

"Right here," Kim said, patting the pocket of her khaki cargoes. "How long do you think it'll be before Drakken figures it out?"

When and if he did, they weren't there to witness it. After turning the Pyro Mindwipe over to Global Justice, who promised they'd find a method of safely detonating it, Kim and Ron were back in Middleton just in time for the firework show at the park to start.

Drakken and Shego and the rest of the villain community disappeared once Kim lowered herself down onto her driveway. Unlined and honey-colored, it looked as peaceful as she felt inside. That had to mean Dad had taken the Tweebs a safe distance from civilization to set off their creepy homemade firecrackers.

Ron evidently wasn't feelin' that peace. He was bouncing his weight from one leg to the other. Kim would have sat him down and gotten it out of him right then, but if she didn't check in with Mom the minute they were home safe and sound, she would never hear the end of it.

So Kim flew into the house to give her mother a brief report and a quick neck-hug. Mom always hung on a little longer than usual after a mission - a totally less embarrassing variation on most mothers' thank-heavens-you're-okay gushing. She was just cool like that.

Back outside, Kim plunked her buns on the driveway and patted for Ron to plunk his next to her. "Okay - spill," she demanded.

Ron looked down at his lap. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his black mission turtleneck, and tiny beads of sweat flecked the faint freckles between his brows. The night air was cool enough not to make you gasp for breath, but there was still plenty of heat that Kim hadn't noticed when she'd been intent on handing defeat to Drakken. "I wish I'd been more help on the mission today," he said to his hands.

Kim couldn't keep her jaw from dropping.

"Why can't the Mystical Monkey Power ever kick in when I could _really _use it?" Ron continued. "Do you even _need _me to come with you?"

"Sure I do," Kim said - automatically - and then hoped she hadn't pulled a best-friend-fudge. But she couldn't fib about the rush that rose in her without even waiting for reasons. She flashed back to last Christmas, how every empty escape pod, every minute that went by without Ron had wrapped her tighter in a crushing grip that wasn't all that different from the anaconda's.

Ron dragged out a long sigh. "I mean, with your Kimness and all - "

"My Kimness is EXACTLY why I need you!" Kim hadn't realized how true the words were until she'd blurted them. "You're, like, the only laid-back person in my life. I'd be some kind of freakish snob without you."

Ron's shoulders un-hunched the slightest bit.

Kim propped herself up on one elbow and studied him. "So - I thought we'd gotten this whole self-esteem thing worked out. What's this about?"

"It's about the X-Games." Ron fiddled with the heel of one shoe, several sizes bigger than he'd worn last year. "I was so sure that I was gonna be in them, and I would find out who that thief was for you. And then you figured it out for yourself - and _caught _him yourself - "

Now would NOT be the time to tell the poor kid that Junior had helped. That would only make Ron more miserable, and he was shaping a lump in Kim's throat already.

" - and so I really didn't help at all. Wouldn't I be a better sidekick if I could actually kick bad-guy booty like you?" Ron flung his arms out behind him, like he was going to make snow angels out of his drama.

Kim had to grin at him. "Look, I don't think Drakken's poor booty could survive _both _of us kicking it," she said.

Ron grimaced. "I don't wanna talk about Drakken's booty."

Uh, yeah. Neither did Kim. "And there are lots of things you can do that I can't," she told Ron.

"Like what?"

"Cooking," was the first thing off Kim's tongue. The brown slits Ron looked back at her out of made it sound even weaker than it was.

"You can't _cook_ Drakken," Ron said. He stopped and made an even worse gross-out face. "Well, I guess you _could_, but I don't think anyone would approve."

"Yeah, big neg on that one," Kim said. But as she inched her hand toward Ron's on the driveway, she could imagine Drakken searching her with his eyes, as if he were seeking shelter from something of his own doing. She'd tried to engage the person behind the crimes, but her natural disdain must have leaked through.

Ron didn't have that. He could hate on bad guys with the best of them. But it was like they started off each new encounter with a clean slate, and Ron was downright friendly until they threatened somebody he loved. The boy either had the best heart or the worst memory. And if a villain said anything Ron could identify with, he was right there, empathizing with everything in him.

"You could have talked things out with Drakken today," Kim said, clearing her throat the way she would to make room for a cheer. "I tried, but it didn't go anywhere."

"It was Shego that interrupted you - "

Kim interrupted _him_. "While he was deciding whether to do it or not. I bet if it had been you, he would have already started telling you the whole thing. You're - more alike."

Yee-ikes. Where did THAT come from?

Sure enough, a shadow fell across the freckles that made Ron always seem happy. "I'm like _Drakken_?" His voice cracked back to its twelve-year-old state. "You think I'm that stupid?"

Kim held up both hands to halt a flood of Ron-panic. How was she supposed to explain that she'd been comparing him to Drakken's NON-grotesque side? "Look, don't ever tell him I said this," Kim confided, "but Drakken's plenty smart. And so are you. You just both have. . . that ADHD thing going on." She was _not _going to channel the school counselor - one of the few jobs Barkin _wasn't _qualified for at Middleton High - and fall back on the phrase "applying yourself."

A little of the charming smile pulled at Ron's lips.

"You're both sensitive," Kim went on. "And - loyal."

She could not BELIEVE she was describing her arch-nemesis that way. But the worry swimming in Drakken's eyes as he'd asked about the Seniors, and as he'd knelt beside Shego, that hadn't come from the waste pool of scum.

He wasn't _completely_ boorish, Kim decided. Not compared to a lot of the other villains she'd met lately. Motor Ed, Vinnie Wheeler - if there were people inside the overgrown sixth-grader and the sleazy accountant, it was going to take Kim decades to find them.

With Drakken, though, it was always like he was on the brink of showing her his other self, and then remembering and tearing it away. It was almost as frustrating as his allergy to quitting.

Yeah, that was Drakken in a nutshell. Frustrating.

"You're both just kind of big kids," Kim finished. "In a good way, in your case. I think you'd understand each other."

Ron came up on both knees and peered at her through his bangs. "So - you think I could be, like, a villain therapist or something?"

He was so earnest and lit-up, Kim broke into laughter. "Yeah, something like that." She gave him a playful poke with her toe. "You'd just have to stop calling them super-freaks when they explained their goals."

"Ooh - look! A Roman candle!" was Ron's reply. He'd already transported himself to the next awesome event. It was what constantly bugged Kim on missions and made him one of the best people to sit under a summer sky with.

When she'd watched those same stars with her other best guy last week, Josh had talked, all intense and hunky, about what types of paint he would have to use to recreate the scene. Then he'd winked and said that he wasn't sure _any _paint could capture her look, and Kim had been grateful Drakken's embarrassment potion was a thing of the past.

As lusciously heart-pumping as that was, it was nice to spend time with a boy who didn't make her blush. The ease of everything about them had Kim scooting in closer. "Look, you can see Venus up there," she said.

Ron's neck jerked up. "Where?" he asked, all in a rush, as if the planet might disappear in the next seven seconds.

"Right over Mrs. McGilley's house." Kim pointed straight over the stone chimney. "It looks like one of the stars, but it's _ferociously _brighter."

This time, Ron's sigh was content. "You know all this stuff, KP," he said with a hint of jealousy he wasn't hiding.

"Don't start that with me." Kim rolled to her belly and gave him a warning look. "You'd know how to identify every planet, too, if your dad was a rocket scientist."

"Oh, yeah." Ron blinked. "Probably." He glanced up again, smile widening with each sparkle-spraying pop above him. "Yeah, the Ron-man could catch on."

Kim's breath slid out in relief. Yeah - he was cool with himself again.

"Do you think there's life on other planets, KP?" Ron's voice was hoarse and kind of awestruck. If Barkin had ever heard it like that, Kim always thought, he would have known the kid he'd labeled a "lazy slacker" back in freshman year really DID want to learn things.

The canopy of stars above Kim suddenly seemed endless. She'd never thought about it much before. It took most of her energy just to defend _this_ planet. Fortifying Area 51 so Drakken couldn't attack it with his ginormous poodle hadn't left a lot for investigating exactly what was inside.

"I don't know," she said. "Dad and his crew have sent probes to almost everywhere in the galaxy, and they haven't found anything. Yet."

"Yeah, but aliens are sneaky." Ron's eyes turned wise. "They can probably turn themselves invisible and stuff."

Kim shrugged. Really, would invisible aliens be any weirder than ones you _could _see? "I guess anything's possible."

"Or Stoppable," Ron said cheerfully. "I just hope if they come, they come in peace." His whole face glowed in the light of the fireworks and the potential. "Ya think they'd feel more at home if they met Gill first? Somebody should make sure they meet Gill first."

"See, there are plenty of bizarre creatures right here on Earth," Kim agreed. "We just defeated two of them."

A green sadist and a blue pain-in-the-tail. It would be tough for the rest of the galaxy to top THAT.

Ron shifted, and Kim didn't think it was because of the loose gravel he was sitting on. "I got a call from the Middleton Toxicity Research Center the other day. Meant to tell you," he said, his voice saturated with something very un-Ron.

"Speaking of our favorite mutant fish-kid." Kim nudged her elbow into the primo-ticklish skin right over Ron's belly button. "Who you, by the way, defeated twice on your own."

To Kim's concern, Ron didn't stand up for a bow. "Wish I hadn't _had _to defeat him twice," he muttered. He was picking at a hangnail, probably without noticing, wearing a does-this-even-make-any-sense look that Kim wasn't sure if he was aiming out at her or in at himself.

Yeah, it made sense. Kim nodded - the words "you hoped he'd be reformed when he was cured" were unnecessary. Not that Ron would have been able to HEAR them over the delighted shrieks of a couple of grade-schoolers two houses down, streaming down their driveways as if they thought they could leap into the sky. Behind them, parents were clicking off porch lights to better appreciate the night. For a moment, Kim envied the handstands the kids were throwing themselves into _without_ dodging some sort of death beam.

"He's not exactly stable yet," Ron added.

"You mean, like physically, or -" Kim tapped her temple and made a noise like a doorbell.

A fraction of the grin did break across Ron's face then. "Both." The grin disappeared as fast as it had arrived. "They said it'll probably take more work to get him back to normal this time. Apparently turning yourself back into a mutant is a major health no-no."

"Do they have any idea _why _he did it?" Kim asked. The crime-fighter weight settled unexpectedly over her. Criminal insanity didn't usually do much except revolt her.

"Yeah. They said - a buncha stuff I had to have your dad translate for me - but the gist of it is that they're super-smart environmental-biology-ists and not shrinks. So they were able to cure his body, but they didn't even stop to think if he was gonna be brainsick or not." Ron tipped forward, palms turned upward. "Which, duh! How could he NOT be?"

"Exactly," Kim agreed with an eye-roll. Sheesh, and people wondered why Team Possible felt like they had to do everything themselves.

Ron nodded. "And so he got released, but he was still all messed up and angry inside, so he remembered the only time he'd ever really had any kind of power. When he was a mutant."

Kim's fingers coiled on the driveway's scratchy surface. Something hollow was forming in her stomach, just the way it had when Gill had stepped onto the stage in his mutant form, bigger and slimier than ever.

"So he went back to that," Ron finished. The glance he gave Kim stopped just short of disillusioned. It was something she'd only seen in him when he finally discovered that his crush on some girl was, as Dad said, "unrequited."

Luckily, it didn't stay long. Ron shot to his feet in a jumble of long arms and legs. "Hey, lookit _that_ one, KP!" he cried. "It's a double-exploder!"

Kim tilted her head back for a clearer view. Even as ashes drifted down from the sky, other tiny lights fizzed and popped like soda bubbles in their place.

Ron's enthusiasm was contagious. The thing _was _gorgeous.

Rufus squealed and followed it up with a loud "a-HEM!" that clearly indicated Ron had at least one last piece of information to share.

"Oh. Right." Ron rubbed the back of his neck. "They're getting Gill counseling now. You know, while they try to fix his mutant problems," he said without his usual bounce. The nervous giggle was as glaring a substitute as Mr. Barkin.

He turned to Kim with the question she had asked herself a thousand times printed on his face. "Do you think that'll help?"

Kim struggled to imagine even one of her villains without their sneers, without their hatred digging into her. Every leering mouth seemed to be saying, _Well? Can we change?_

She'd like to _think _they could, but so far White Stripe had been their only success, and he'd been sort of tricked into villainy in the first place. Monkey Fist's lucid center, somewhere in the middle of his layers of wack, didn't care that he was welcoming the darkness with open arms. Drakken wasn't really _that_ evil in the grand scheme of things, but he obviously had some pretty serious mental issues that he wasn't working through in addition to just being so darn stubborn. And then there was Shego, so far gone at the ripe old age of - what, maybe twenty-three? - that Kim wondered if there was any chance for her at all.

While it wasn't part of Kim's job to rehabilitate them - she had enough on her plate without taking on a bunch of supervillains' pain - Gill was just a kid. Like them. Who'd been through some pretty noxious stuff. Kim guessed if SHE'd mutated into a giant fish monster, SHE probably would have gone crazy, too.

And Ron had such pure, little-boy hope in his eyes that Kim couldn't stand to stomp on.

"Well, it can't hurt," she said honestly. Her best cheerleading smile, the one that could even soften Barkin on occasion, kicked in.

Ron wrapped his arms around himself and shivered into them, despite the still-lower-nineties temperature. "Man, where does Gill _go _when he gets released? Where's his home? I mean, does he even _have _parents?"

Kim felt a stab of pity go through her for the elusive Mosses. They must have suffered dual heart attacks when they'd discovered their kid had mutated into something out of _It Came From the Swamp Part XVI_.

Okay - no - this _so _wasn't funny. What if they really HAD gone into cardiac arrest and that was why Gill wasn't with them now? When Kim thought of him as the skinny kid with the thick lips instead of the repulsive swamp monster, it really did do something to her heart.

"I have no idea," Kim said. She'd have to put Wade right on that. It was more than just Kimness telling her to.

Ron, who'd amazingly managed to stay on the topic for six straight minutes, decided to swap it out for a fresh one. "What do you think Drakken's up to right now? What does he do after he gets defeated? When he's not in jail, I mean."

The picture of a hangdog Drakken popped into Kim's head instantly. Tears. There were usually tears. Maybe a tantrum if he were in a feisty mood. _Being _Drakken must have been the only thing more frustrating than _fighting _Drakken.

"He probably goes down to Smarty Mart, switches a few price tags around, and then he's good," Kim replied with a shrug. For all his pouting, Drakken was as resilient as that wasp you just couldn't swat. He'd be licking his wounds right about now, ranting to Shego, and then he'd bounce back.

And Kim couldn't bring herself to be _too_ down on the guy, considering he'd had the opportunity to try and slap her a in death trap today – and hadn't taken it. Though she would have rather dealt with one of Drakken's notoriously unreliable deathtraps than his usually-more-effective mind control, Kim had to admit that was super huge for him.

Ron snickered through his nose. "_I _bet he goes to an ice cream bar to drown his sorrows."

"That _would _be the kind of bar Drakken would go to," Kim said. Her mental image had switched to one of Drakken slouched in a MAJOR sugar crash over a half-eaten carton of Rocky Road. It was all she could do not to guffaw.

"So, if we went to get ice cream right now, do you think we'd run into him?" Ron's face glimmered expectantly.

Talk about contagious. That enthusiasm had wrapped itself around Kim's sleeve and was dragging her straight in. She located the smile _not _used for persuading teachers or taunting Drakken and let it take over. "There's only one way to find out. Just let me tell Mom."

Ron exclaimed "Boo-yah!" and Rufus began doing actual cartwheels down the driveway. Kim hurried toward the front door, fireworks still popping happily in her ears.

Yeah, she needed this kid. And his mole rat. Who else gave her an excuse to do kid-things and go out for ice cream just because? Just as long as she didn't forget it was her job to make sure Drakken never got to have a celebratory dinner.

Maybe, Kim thought with a smirk only halfway there, he could at least enjoy the fireworks.

**~Anyone curious about my version of Drakken's dad can read chapters 11, 20, and 21 of my story _Work in Progress: Study of an Evil Genius_. Or you can just stay tuned. . . **

**A snicker-worthy typo: accidentally wrote that Drakken lifted one "book" instead of one "foot." Not sure how THAT happened. **

**Reviews are appreciated. :) ~  
**


	13. This Summer

**~Yay for the next chapter! Hope that wasn't _too_ long a wait.~**

**Her**

Kim Possible caught herself reaching for a mascara tube that wasn't there.

Of course it wasn't. She'd run out yesterday, and she'd spent the past three weeks' allowance on international postage for the sympathy letters.

Long after she'd stopped having dreams of a melting Eric, the deaths were still haunting Kim. Sappy Hallmark cards wouldn't cut it for the families who'd had permanent holes ripped into them that night. Instead, Kim had written long, personal letters, typed in neat Times New Roman because her fingers shook as the words came to them, with her cursive signature at the end. She owed them that much.

Over and over, Kim had admitted to having made "bad decisions" the night of the attack that had "compromised" her efficiency - the Eric-details were still too raw to explain exactly _what_ those choices were. But the rest she'd laid out flat: her regret. Her guilt. How her heart, skyrocketing after she'd gotten home from prom, had promptly dropped and missed two beats when she'd heard the word "casualties" on the news. Kim hoped that it would help them, if not forgive her, at least not place her in the just-as-bad-as-Drakken category.

The tears in her eyes when she'd sent off the first wave of them had made total sense, but they were very much NOT Kim's style. And there were still two hundred letters stacked on the desk waiting to be mailed and about three hundred more that hadn't even been written yet. Not to mention having to tweak the wording a bit every time so that she didn't turn into a machine - it kept the emotional dents way too real.

Wade probably could have called in a free delivery from that squad of postal workers whose office Kim had saved from a mudslide back in eighth grade. But that idea only whirled through her mind for about thirty seconds.

Kim had spent the last two years helping people get back what Drakken had taken from them. Now she couldn't. And it was only fair that she pay for it with her own money.

She glanced down at the bloodless grip she had on the back of her dresser chair. Would she ever be able to think about Drakken again without wanting to rip his guts out? By now, Kim had mostly gotten over the desire to break into the fed pen where Drakken was almost two months into his life sentence just to pummel him. If he _ever_ showed his ugly little face around here again, though. . .

Normally, when Kim got that mad, she hoped Duff or Dementor would try to pull something so she'd have an excuse to knock somebody into next Tuesday. But the rest of the villain community had been laying low since Drakken and Shego's arrest, as if they, too, were shocked into silence. And though Kim wasn't afraid of the next attack, she wasn't looking forward to it, either. If Drakken could turn all criminal-mastermind and go bonkers and kill people, then _anybody _could.

Kim tugged a tank top and a pair of bike shorts on over her racer bikini. All of that was _so_ worse than not being able to spare a few bucks for mascara - not unless she took some out of her college fund, and she could just IMAGINE what the 'rents would say to THAT.

Besides, that wasn't who she was anymore. And Ron was such a comfortable boyfriend, not the kind you had to pretty yourself up for. Like how Dad always told Mom she was beautiful, even at six A.M. when she had morning mouth and bed hair that made her head look like it was on fire.

It struck Kim that Ron was the one guy she _could_ picture herself waking up next to when she was forty.

Okay. Blush. She probably wouldn't be needing the blush either.

Kim did check herself out in the mirror as she pulled on a sun visor. She seemed more mature than she had last summer, and Kim didn't think it was due to the late arrival of a few new curves.

With any luck, the pool party at the community center would remind her that she was only seventeen. An almost-senior - Ron's term - with a great boyfriend and top spot on the cheerleading squad and a super-bright future. It was enough to get the girl in the mirror smiling.

Kim strolled down the stairs, gave Mom and Dad each a kiss on the cheek, ruffled the Tweebs' hair in that way she knew drove them crazy, and headed for the garage. Her old red ten-speed was still in the nest of dust where she'd flung it the minute she'd gotten her license. But Mom and Dad had called both cars today, and Kim felt her grin widen as she flung a leg over the seat. Princess Bonnie would have a _fit _that the cheer captain had shown up on a _bike_ instead of in the gleaming white practically-a-limo Bonnie had gotten for her birthday. Kim was just mean enough to look forward to Bonnie making a psycho out of herself in front of the whole class.

After surviving the Diablo attack, she could handle anything the little witch threw at her. There would be other evil plots to stop dead in their tracks, maybe even ones bigger and badder than Drakken's colossal fail, but it was hard to imagine any being more cut-to-the-core than Eric's plastic arms around her.

Kim spun the pedals down the driveway. Her thoughts were like juggling balls that she had to keep in the air, which was SO not the drama compared to all the things she'd been asked to do lately. She was feeling just short of invincible. The realization that she could save the world, no matter what, had her feet vigorously pumping, tempting her to pop a wheelie. The thought of who might get caught in the crosshairs made her palms go unnaturally dry on the handlebars.

Not a street went by that didn't have part of its pavement blocked off, as construction workers sweated over fixing what the Diablos had lasered to shreds. Kim ground her teeth together and hung on to her vow not to make herself miserable hating Drakken.

The gritting stopped once Kim pulled her bike to a stop in front of the community center. Monique had been the one to come up with a welcome-to-summer bash even before Prom Night. Ron had since renamed it "The Thank-Goodness-Our-Town-is-Still-Standing Party."

Ron himself was waiting by the pool, looking adorable in a pair of bright orange swim trunks with the pattern of trees sprinkled on them in neon-green thread. The sweet little boy Kim had met on the first day of Pre-K was all over him, and it only made him an even nicer sight.

"KP!" Ron hollered, as if the twelve hours he'd gone without seeing her had been twelve MONTHS. He scrambled over to her side and gave her a sideways hug that purposefully soaked the front of her tank top. Kim shoved him. It felt just the way it always had between them, only better.

When Ron put his arm around her waist in that clumsy, dorky way she loved, Kim couldn't have told you what a Diablo even _was_. Ron's grin had a way of doing that to people.

Kim scanned the blue-tiled pool and the concrete wrapped around it. Ugh. Bonnie Rockwaller had shown up after all. She, of course, had spread her towel out a safe distance away from the splashing and games and laid herself daintily across it, clad in a string bikini that left far too little to the imagination. When a cloud passed over the sun, the glare she gave it rivaled several of Kim's foes even at their toughest. Kim wasn't sure what her ish was - the girl was already tan enough to pass for Latina.

Much more sun, and she'd only be a few shades off Monique, who linked a dark-coffee elbow through Kim's and announced that the woman of the hour was here. She leaned in so close to Kim's ear, she could have painted Kim's lobes with Club-Banana-Shade-"Dusk" lipstick. "How are you holding up, girl?" she asked.

Better now that she was surrounded by her two best friends. "It gets a little easier every day," Kim answered. It was a little optimistic but truthful. She couldn't be anything less with them now.

"Do you have nightmares?" Ron's eyes were chocolate drops of sympathy. "'Cuz I do. That was one scary night, and I don't just mean the kind of scary when you watched too many monster movies before bed! Not that that's not bad enough. . . "

Kim felt a pang. What she hoped for most was to put Diablo Night behind her entirely. It was disappointing to hear that Ron, the bounce-back king, hadn't recovered yet. Not to mention how much it upped her desire to smack Drakken across the mouth -

"But look at how it turned out," Ron said. The look he met her with was solemn, but it danced with too much life to be anyone's but his. "We won! The world is saved! You can buy a naco for a buck-fifty again! Drakken's in the hoosegow!"

Kim couldn't hold in a laugh. "The 'hoosegow'?"

"Yeah. It means - "

"I know what it means. Where'd you HEAR it?"

"I. . . . dunno." Ron's voice went blank. "My dad or somethin'." The grin wobbled its way back into place. "It doesn't fix everything, but it helps, right?"

Kim blinked. Those were the exact words she'd used on him whenever they were facing certain doom - in a Dementor-designed death trap or in Algebra II. Now Ron was giving them back to her. There _could _be karma without magic.

"Yeah," she said. "It helps."

Kim ducked into the locker room just long enough to shed her clothes, fold them neatly, and nestle them into her duffel bag. The room was shaded like a pair of sunglasses, so the harsh sun nearly fried Kim's eyeballs when she emerged. She brought her hand up to her brow and squinted against it.

When her vision returned, it was Ron she saw, standing in the one-inch-deep end of the kiddie pool. Occasional waves lapped up over his chunky sandals, but Ron didn't seem to notice them. All his sometimes-frayed focus was on the streams of water leaping up from the holes drilled into the pool bottom. He was as intent as Rufus got when he was sniffing out a piece of cheese.

Speaking of Rufus, he was perched on Ron's shoulder as usual, clad in his own micro-shorts - in the same eye-burning orange as Ron's, natch - and a miniature swim mask and snorkel. Kim wished she had a camera to snap the goofball picture they made.

Ron completed that by glancing up and waving her over until he about toppled backward. "Hey, KP!" he hollered, loud enough to be heard in Lowerton, Kim was sure. "Over here!"

Kim crossed over to him. "Um, any particular reason we're at the kiddie pool?"

Ron burned a sheepish pink, highlighting smears of sunscreen. "I'm giving the lifeguard some time to chillax. He's kinda mad at me."

Kim swallowed "What did you do?" in favor of a way-more-tactful "Why?"

"Tried going down the water slide headfirst. He didn't go for that."

"No kidding? That's a great way to drown."

"Yeah. So we're 'amusing ourselves'" - Ron airquoted - "over here for a bit. I always wanted to see somebody catch one of these. But it's not working out too well."

Rufus scowled in agreement as he climbed to a vantage point on Ron's forearm.

They were so into it, Kim sort of forgot just how goofy it was. She crouched down on her heels and narrowed her eyes forward. _Don't aim for where your opponent is, _she could remember a dozen self-defense teachers instructing her. _Aim for where they're going to be when you get there._

With the old rush in her, Kim sprang from the ground and reached the fourth hole down just as it spit another stream into the air. The water hit her waiting fist and broke into a spray that rained down on them and a rather bewildered-looking Monique. She shook her head, earrings swaying, Monique-language for, "I'm not even going to _ask_."

Ron sent up a cheer that made Kim feel seventeen and invincible again.

And she was _so_ ready to tackle that water slide. Kim was barely winded when she reached the top of the flight of stairs, high enough to be interrupted in four different places by ramps. Monique had opted for the lower slide and probably ridden it down about eighty steps ago. Ron, being his wonderful non-jock self, was panting and huffing and clearly ready to collapse at the lifeguard's feet.

He perked up in a major way, though, when the Mega-Middleton Super-Soaked Conga Slide - sixty feet of looping plastic - came into view. Enough to regain his Ron-energy and bow all chivalrously to Kim. "Ladies first."

"See you at the bottom!" Kim flung herself into the tube and, at the lifeguard's nod, shoved herself forward.

The slide zipped her down, rushing, flowing, carrying her at that speed Kim loved to live her life at. She didn't make a sound - she REALLY wasn't the screaming type - but she smiled big enough for water to bounce off her teeth. The dunk at the bottom came all too quick, and Kim was back on the surface before she could register being underwater. She floated there, hair plastered to her scalp and nothing but happiness inside her.

Ron and Rufus came down next, their joyful squeals mixing until Kim couldn't tell one from the other. To Ron's credit, he'd come down feet-first this time, but he managed to turn a complete circle two seconds after he landed in the pool. That was just Ron's thing.

He swam up to Kim and gave her a poke. "Look," he said, pointing at a tucked-away square in the corner of the pool. "Water basketball. And I'm taller than you now." Ron's eyebrows waggled.

Kim felt her own wiggling back. "Was that a challenge?"

"Bring it, baby!"

The game was closer than Kim had expected. Unlike her, Ron _had_ gotten taller in the last year - all the way up to his mom's five-foot-seven. Not exactly NBA material, but he was more graceful in the water. He actually pulled off snagging a few of Kim's shots before they made it into the basket.

In the end, though, Kim sent the winning one sailing right over his head. It came down on the rim, hesitated there, and then dropped through the net - right as Monique yelled, "Time!"

"Good game." Ron clasped Kim's hand with a paw he still hadn't grown into. There wasn't even a TRACE of that I'm-a-loser drag to his shoulders when he said, "But I'll get you next time. Just you wait."

"I'm _so _sure," Kim retorted. She gripped the side of the pool and hoisted herself out.

Before her feet had even touched concrete, one of the lifeguards began to scream. Kim twisted around, already prepped to dive back in and save someone, but the lifeguard was pointing a trembling finger at the spot she'd just vacated, where Ron gaped back at her. Rufus was paddling beside him, blowing bubbles through his snorkel.

"There's a naked mole rat in the pool!" the lifeguard cried.

_Geesh. I forgot how most people don't see that every day_, Kim thought. _Well, at least nobody's drowning or anything_.

"Yeah, but don't worry," Ron assured the lifeguard, using every last ounce of the Stoppable charm. "He can swim."

Kim had to lean against the gate to keep her laughter in.

After Kim had reassured the lifeguard that Rufus had had all his shots, was certified disease-free, and would never hurt anyone, she turned to Ron and said, "How about we go get some ice-cream sandwiches?" _Give the poor woman a chance to calm down_, she DIDN'T say.

Ron was more than happy with that arrangement. He took off, practically skipping, toward the snack bar, leaving squishy wet footprints behind him. He'd forgotten to ditch the sandals before diving in.

Kim was only two steps behind when she felt someone's long fingernails curve around her wrist. Someone's hot breath tingled the nape of her neck. She was ready to karate-chop them when whoever it was said, "Kim - can we talk?"

Chills that hadn't climbed up Kim's spine since she'd left Drakken bawling in the courtroom made an unwanted reappearance. _Groan. Bonnie._

It had to be Bonnie. The voice was as shallow as the almost-bare end of the kiddie pool and oozed with the same stuff Eric had leaked when he melted. Pure fake.

Bonnie turned Kim around to face her. Add height and hair and subtract all color from her skin, and she could have been Shego. Except Shego wouldn't have been caught dead in Bonnie's swimwear. Kim wasn't some kind of froob - but, seriously, how would that even stay ON if you went down the water slide? Ewww.

"Just for a few minutes," Bonnie added in a coy-enough-to-gag-you whisper. "Girl talk."

The not-very-likely scenario of Bonnie needing to borrow something from the "feminine products" aisle was all that got Kim to nod cautiously. She yanked her wrist from Bonnie's grip, however, and refused to let herself be towed to the spot beside the diving boards Bonnie had chosen, probably a long time ago, as their meeting place. There was something calculated about all of this.

And when Bonnie opened her mouth, she might as well have been reading from a script. "So, Kim, you're still hanging around with people from the BOTTOM of the food chain." Her blue-green eyes flashed like a peacock's tail. Also practiced.

Kim swallowed a dozen angry comebacks. The first rule when it came to engaging Bonnie was NOT to go into it snarling like a wildcat. That was one thing when she was insulting Kim's fashion sense or her splits and kicks. A total other when she started in on Ron.

"Get with the ecosystem, Bonnie," Kim said. "It's not a food chain, it's a food _web_."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," Bonnie said, eyebrows slithering up to meet her hairline.

Kim feigned confusion. "I do?"

"Um, yes! Your bargain boyfriend." Bonnie threw a glance over her bare, bronzed shoulder at the snack bar - with the same turned-up lip the lifeguard had sported when she saw Rufus. "You thought you could get two-for-one: boyfriend and best friend at the same time." She gave the perfect tresses that almost matched her skin a flip. "Take it from a girl who has plenty of shopping experience - some things are marked down for a reason."

By now, Kim knew her blood had turned to stone and cemented her hands into fists. Her voice, though, flowed out in smooth ripples - letting Bonnie _know_ she could tweak you worse than any supervillain would have been like giving her something from Prada. "Take it from a girl who's had just as much: some things are only good for looking nice in the display window," she said.

"I understand how you'd pounce on your first potential prom date," Bonnie continued. She rested a too-smooth hand on Kim's arm. "But prom's over. You don't have to settle for Dorkable anymore."

She glanced back over her shoulder at where Ron was making his way toward them, an ice cream sandwich in each hand. When Bonnie scalded him with an I-don't-recall-giving-you-permission-to-breathe-my-air look, Ron skidded to a sudden halt. The poor kid had his best "unaffected" expression, but the nervous twitches gave him away.

It lit Kim's fire. "I'm 'settling' for a guy who risks his life for me? When I could ditch him and run off to suck face with the nearest beefcake?" She gave her eyes an exaggerated roll, practically back into her head. "You're right, Bonnie - what's WRONG with me?"

"Look, Kim, I'm telling you this for your own good." Bonnie's concern was about as real as Aunt June's "diamond" earrings. "Dating a loser could seriously damage your reputation."

"And who decides who's a loser and who's not?" It was a question that had been stored somewhere inside Kim ever since the day she'd first crossed paths with this girl.

"Hello! The pop-u-u-u-lar kids!" Bonnie's habit of drawing out words, as if anything could sound distasteful if she just added enough syllables, had never been more annoying.

Kim laughed out loud. "Well, I'm popular, too, Bonnie," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "And I say Ron is no loser." She barely kept herself from adding, _YOU are_.

"You might not be for long, though," Bonnie said, face drawing tighter with every word. "The cheer squad, the debate team, all those little clubs you're an officer of - they're not going to want you around if you make them look bad."

She was voicing what had been Kim's worst fears back in March, and they sounded even weaker coming out of Bonnie. When Kim and Ron had arrived at prom hand in hand, neither one quite knowing exactly where they were going from here, Kim had been prepared for the reactions she'd get. They sure couldn't have been more painful than anything else about that night.

But _every_one, jocks and geeks and everything in between, had burst into rowdy applause. Even Brick, the prince consort, had joined in.

Everybody's disapproval would have been a stupid reason to break up with Ron anyway, and ONE person's disapproval? As if. Ron was totally worth getting a little flack from Bonnie. It wasn't like little Bon-Bon would have let up anyway.

"I don't remember seeing that on prom night," Kim said.

The worry slid from Bonnie, replaced by the snide truth. "There were a lot of things you didn't notice that night. Like the big ugly scorch mark up the side of your dress."

The girl should never join the debate team. Whenever she found herself out-argued, she resorted to flinging outfit burns.

Kim hid a smile. "Yeah, I was a little busy. Got that scorch mark, you know - _saving the entire world_!"

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Kim wanted to snatch them back. She'd just given Bonnie the perfect ammunition: she HADN'T been able to save everyone in the world. It hadn't escaped Bonnie either; Kim could tell by the uncertain shift of her peacock eyes that she was trying to decide whether or not to use it.

She didn't. "And I can see why he likes you," Bonnie said, one arm dangling casually at her side in a pose she must have been rehearsing all morning. The other hand on her hip revealed she meant business. "After all, you're his ticket up. And I'm sure he thinks you're a great kisser. Though - " her laugh ripped out in nasty chunks - "who does he have to compare you to? His teddy bear?"

The pool was only feet away - one good hard heels-of-your-hands shove, and Bonnie would tumble in. Only the mental flash of Shego writhing as electrical currents passed from the tower into her body kept Kim's fists still but straining at her sides. That, and it was what Bonnie wanted - for Kim to get mad, lose control, prove Bonnie right in cataloging her with the almost-losers.

"There's more to love than making out, Bonnie," Kim said, as slowly and with as much boredom as she could, like she was talking to a temperamental toddler.

"Oh, come _on_, Possible!" Bonnie's voice finally broke into a great impression of dethroned royalty. "A cheerleader with an uncool guy has _never _worked. Not once! Not EVER!" The peacock feathers were getting closer together and hard as pearls.

Behind them, a preschool-age boy took his finger out of his nose just long enough to point at Bonnie. "Mommy?" he lisped. "Why is that girl in her underwear?"

Kim muffled a howl into the back of her arm as Bonnie's cheeks went apple-colored. The kid's mother turned even redder and shushed him, already whispering some kind of explanation.

_Good luck with THAT one, Mom. _

Skin still visibly sizzling, Bonnie whipped back to Kim. "I mean it," she hissed through her teeth, whiter than ever against her tan. "You and Stoppable - it's pathetic."

"Pathetic?" Kim repeated. "This coming from the girl who's constantly breaking up with a perfectly nice guy because he doesn't chew right or something and won't take him back until he comes crawling for forgiveness?"

Bonnie sniffed. "You're just jealous because a football player likes me."

Could she have sounded a little younger?

"No, actually, Bonnie, I think you're jealous that a boy _actually _likes _me_," Kim said.

"What do you mean?"

Kim straightened herself up taller to deliver the blow, like she'd done so many times before to people WAY more evil than Bonnie. "Brick doesn't like you, Bonnie," she hissed back. "He's just afraid of you."

For an instant, Bonnie's eyes sprang from their slits and went round with hurt, and Kim would have taken the words back if she could have. It worked, though. Bonnie flung her hair around one last time, huffed, "What-EVER," turned her back, and marched away.

Kim collapsed against the gate, feeling like she'd just won a staring contest with a cat.

And then Ron was there, grinning, his lovable self in his too-bright swim trunks. Eric's perfectly symmetrical face _had _been hot, but there was something strangely gorgeous about Ron's freckled nose and stick-out ears. Like marshmallows on a hot dog, they just sort of . . . fit together.

He held out a slightly melted ice cream sandwich to Kim. "Here ya go. On me."

"Ron, I could have paid for my own - "

Ron stopped her protest with a palm. "No, really, KP. The boyfriend buys the snackage," he said, the _boyfriend_ three decibels higher than the rest. "Even if he has to borrow from Ron Reiger to do it."

"You better pay me back, Stoppable!" another boy-voice yelled from the other side of the pool.

Oh, well. Thought that counted, right?

"You comin' to my place for the 4th of July party?" Reiger said. "You can pay up then."

Kim was shaking her head before she even realized she was doing it, and so Ron shook his, too. "No, thanks," Kim said. "We've got other plans. It's our night to celebrate Bueno Nacho not being in Drakken's hands anymore."

Besides, she'd seen enough explosions from the sky to last her the rest of teen-hood. If not her LIFE.

Reiger leaned over to ask his buddies something - something that sounded an awful lot like, "Drakken? Was that the freak's name?"

Yeah, it was. And it weighed right on Kim's chest.

"Somethin' wrong?" Ron stepped in front of her and tilted his head to one side until it about sloped off his neck.

Kim didn't feel like rehashing it. Definitely didn't want to drag Ron down with the same old, same old they'd been over a hundred times already.

So she went for the least traumatic part. "I couldn't afford to buy mascara this week."

"Is that the - the - eyelash stuff?" Ron asked.

Most of the Drakken-mood was snuffed out right there. "Yeah, it is," Kim said. "That's why my eyelashes are all pale today."

"Oh." Ron blinked his own, even lighter in the summertime, at her. The sun was starting to dry his blondness into stiff spikes that were just too cute. "Well, I like them this way."

It wasn't his suck-up act, which got Kim to ask, "Really?"

"Yeah, really," Ron said, grin spreading like Silly Putty. "'Cuz then I have to be real close to see them. And when we're that close, I know we're about to kiss."

He said it in his usual happy-go-lucky tone, but it was WAY hotter than any sultry voice on the big screen. Kim could almost see the glue she'd wanted in a relationship holding them together.

Just as she'd thought it, Ron's shoulder blades hitched up to his neck and tightened there. "What Bonnie was saying - about cheerleaders and not-cool guys - " he fumbled out.

Every inch of Kim's shaved-that-morning legs began to prickle. "You _heard_ her?" If he had, he was going to need a pep talk that would last until tomorrow.

"Kinda hard not to." Ron was toying with the elastic at the waist of his trunks. Kim prayed he wouldn't loosen them enough to drop. Bonnie could eat him alive as it was. "And I just wanted to know - is she right?"

"Since when is Bonnie right about anything?"

"Well - uh - in math class. She said four was the square root of sixteen - "

Kim elbowed Ron. "That's not what I meant," she laughed.

"So - will it work?" Ron said. The self-confidence was wavering in his eyes, but it hadn't blipped out.

"Let's find out," Kim breathed. She leaned forward to touch noses with Ron, which was just about as good as a kiss. Eric's touch had stirred her stomach; Ron's stirred her soul. It wasn't even a feeling so much as a deep understanding, like Ron had taken who he was and opened it wide enough for her to enter.

It was glue that didn't break under pressure. And even Drakken hadn't been powerful enough to take it away.

**Him**

"Don't get too close

It's dark inside

It's where my demons hide

It's where my demons hide"

-Imagine Dragons

". . . so I hear some big cities are building these special tunnels by the sides of the road for deer to use so they won't get hit by cars. I think that's a swell idea, because deer-related accidents cost the American auto industry millions of dollars a year. Well, you probably knew that - I bet your cousin told ya," Frugal Lucre went on - and on - and on. "But I have to wonder, how are they going to make sure the deer _do_ use the tunnel? Can they read the Deer Crossing signs? Of course, they wouldn't have be able to _read_, but do they even recognize that deer symbol as them? Do they know what they look like? I guess they could see themselves in rivers and stuff. . . "

Dr. Drakken swallowed a bite of soggy prison meatloaf, waiting for his stomach acid to confront it with its new this-town-ain't-big-enough-for-the-two-of-us mentality. The food in the federal penitentiary wasn't really any worse than in the state pen - some dishes came out a little better, even. Nevertheless, it had soured Drakken's appetite in a way it had never been able to before.

He'd had cases of food poisoning that hadn't left his digestive system this unhappy. Every time Drakken took a bite, his throat simply closed, refusing entry. Anything that _did_ manage to make it down promptly boomeranged back up.

Of course, that could have also been the effect of the blathering man sitting across from him. Lucre yakked and yakked - fascinating, really, how he never needed to stop for breath. Did the guy not have lungs?

Drakken resented the knot that was cramping his insides. He'd heard that prison was supposed to harden you, turn you cold and tough. He'd been hard during the Diablo plot, right up until the instant of failure, hard enough to unnerve himself with what he was capable of. Unnerve himself right back into his old weakness, as a matter of fact. Still, with all his experience behind bars, Drakken would have thought he'd have been more seasoned by now.

_Now_. When was _now_, even? Impossible to keep track in here. Even though it was probably hotter than the boiling point of gold outside, the prison was always kept at a temperature that could freeze nitrogen.

It was already June - or was it July? Velvet purple flowers would be overtaking his mother's garden, but Drakken would never see them. And there would certainly be no 4th of July celebration. Okay, so maybe they'd serve those red-white-and-blue Jell-O cups - and maybe his stomach would even keep it down in honor of the occasion - but no fireworks. Not unless someone smuggled them in, and whenever an inmate dared to smuggle something in, it was always something boring, like drugs.

And Drakken was having none of that. No illicit substances would enter his body. Those ADHD meds had messed him up badly enough, and they'd been. . . licit.

Although he might have been able to _see_ some fireworks if he took drugs. . .

Drakken considered that for .5 seconds before mustering enough strength to shake his head. No, knowing the guys in here, they would have probably laced his sample with anthrax before giving it to him. Drakken had expected to be housed with world-renowned supervillains, whose respect he would have finally garnered with the Diablo plot. Instead, his fellow prisoners were common lowlifes, and they _still _managed to make him feel like low man on the totem pole.

They weren't impressed by his life sentence, and knowing that Drakken had been responsible for the attack that devastated the world hadn't gained him much street cred, yo. Not enough to avoid being punched whenever the guards weren't looking or called "Bluiser" - a dull-witted combination of "blue" and "loser" - or shoved during the daily shuffles to the cafeteria.

Even the way the men _talked _was ghastly. Cussing, cussing, cussing, two or three times in any given sentence. Drakken wasn't above blurting out a word or two himself - usually when an evil tool met his thumb or sparked shock through him - but these guys used obscenities as if they were coupons that would expire tomorrow. It burnt under your skin and seared into your ears, and you couldn't help but hear it and think it and then use it yourself. And it was Visiting Day tomorrow, and Drakken didn't want to curse in front of his mother.

He was breaking her heart enough already as it was. And Mother had really been wonderful about the whole thing - visiting him every week, writing him letters, taking in Commodore Puddles. Drakken had initially been wary about that situation, since his dog didn't generally like anyone except him. However, from everything Mother had told him, Commodore Puddles had taken to her like a fish out of water.

Fish in water. Something about fish and water.

_If someone doesn't break me out in the next fifteen years, I'll never see my puppy again!_

Drakken plastered a hand over his mouth. The thoughts swaggered across his mind like the gang that had tried to beat him up last week. He would never have a birthday cake baked in his honor again. Or tear happily into a Christmas present or drop rocks in ponds to produce concentric circles.

Surely someone _would _come to break him out. Surely, since he was the ultimate mad scientist, someone even little munchkins like Lucre hoped to emulate. Surely a group of adorers even now plotted Drakken's escape.

But what if he wasn't? And what if they didn't?

Well, it still could have been worse. The people who'd died would never have another birthday or Christmas or anything ever again. He'd ripped that away from them without even asking, without even caring.

Drakken sighed from the depths of his rolling gut. Anyone who could do that to another person - one who'd never done a thing to them - could not have been a nice guy. Granted, Drakken was no goody-two-shoes - and he didn't want to be - but he'd always tried to keep a speck of niceness.

DNAmy was right: he was the biggest meanie in the whole wide world. But wasn't some of this her fault anyway? If she'd just married him, he would have been happy enough not to need the world anymore.

Drakken tried to flip back to being cramped and resentful, but it was too late. Another fissure had formed in his heart. It was true. His misery went far deeper than tepid food or unfashionable orange jumpsuits or even Lucre's nonstop chatter. The number _752_ wouldn't leave him alone.

For once, great plots failed Drakken. He'd read _Frankenstein _enough times to know better than to run around raising the dead. Time travel was out, too. . . every time Drakken even thought about it, he was taunted by memories of things that had never happened - things like steroids and getting zapped in the neck by a collar.

The rest of Diablo night wouldn't settle factually into Drakken's brain, other than that he'd gotten desperate and angry. So people were dead. And for what?

The image of himself on his very own throne, reining over all, should have seemed a very flimsy reason.

It didn't.

Especially not when Drakken compared it to living in here for the rest of his life. It wasn't so much the conditions (they had running water and even cable) as the guys who were so mean, Drakken didn't even want to speculate on what they were in for. There was a group of them who all had "White Supremacy" pins, and they hadn't found it very amusing when Drakken had made his own "Blue Supremacy" button.

They were the ones who had collared him in the gym, behind the exercise machines where they had been working out, in the corner where Drakken had been sitting and shaking. Started off talking smack to him, and Drakken could tell they weren't bluffing. Luckily, a guard had intervened just as the leader was winding up to throw the first punch.

It was disgusting, the way such intellectual inferiors got away with treating a genius like him. And Drakken had gotten the chance to tell them that yesterday, while they were playing poker in the multipurpose room with a guard stationed at their table. "Some day I will be ruler of the world, and you shall all be my servants!" he'd said to their stupid, gawking faces. "So the way you treat me now will determine the way I treat you then!"

To add to the unfairness, _Lucre _had never been on the receiving end of their wrath. Drakken had heard one of them comment that the man was too obnoxious to be around long enough to beat him senseless.

Well. Yes. Drakken had to grant them that.

Drakken poked his fork into a glob of an unidentified, supposedly edible substance. He hoped Shego was faring better over in the women's prison. She hadn't messaged him on Villainster in weeks. He tried not to assume the worst. Who would be in there who Shego couldn't handle, anyway?

Elsewhere on the Internet, the Evil Eye Trio was cashing in on the biggest villain story to hit the stands in months, asking their viewers to rate Drakken's prison look. Consensus was that he needed a haircut but that the jumpsuit was very slimming.

Drakken wasn't sure that was an illusion. His washed-out skin clung tightly to knobby bones he hadn't glimpsed since his college days. They always joked on TV about convicts getting fat off greasy prison chow, but Drakken knew he was dropping pounds at a rate supermodels would covet.

Even his behind was getting too bony to sit on comfortably, and where else could you sit? Drakken was prepared to investigate -

Wait. Something didn't sound right. Something was wrong.

Lucre's blabbing had long since ceased to register as words, but his pitch was getting higher, more frantic. Drakken hadn't known Lucre's voice could do anything except drone like a worker bee, and it brought him to Instant Alert.

Instant wasn't fast enough. Drakken heard the heavy, flat metal object slam into his head - _CLUNNNNG! _- before the sudden, dull pain blasted through him. It drove him nose-first to the table, where his eyes struggled to focus.

Drakken was swallowing the meat loaf again when he felt a tug at his arm, as if someone were stretching it out to measure it. Then something worse. Something far, far worse.

Pain. No, pain didn't begin to describe it. Agony. He was in agony.

Abject fear turned Drakken's throbbing head toward his right arm. He saw just what he'd hoped he wouldn't. Rivers of blood spurted from a long, too-straight gash with no end in sight.

And his sleeve was ripped! At the bicep! How had that happened?!

Drakken plastered his hand to the wound, but red drenched his fingers. He hadn't seen that much blood since the day he'd sliced his face open, right under the eye. Surely his whole arm was coming off.

Only there was no Shego to cry out for today. There was nothing except some barking corner of his brain, demanding he _calm down. Fight through it, Drakken. Don't freak out and let them know you're even more of a wimp than they thought_.

But how were you supposed to keep from coming apart when you were. . . coming apart? A sob jammed in Drakken's throat. This couldn't happen - this was incorrect - arms didn't just tear themselves open and start bleeding like that!

Not on their own, anyway.

"Oh God oh God oh God oh God," Drakken hissed, over and over, not sure if he was praying or swearing or what. The room didn't spin so much as suddenly shrink and tilt at an angle pretty far up on the ol' protractor.

The rest jumbled into a fuzz of sensory overload. Lucre calling for help, the first time Drakken had ever been glad to hear his obnoxious voice. The coppery smell of his own blood. The gleam of a razor blade and, above it, a leering mouth ripping across a stubbled face as if the blade had slashed it there with cold, controlled strokes. The molten flood of pain pouring from his arm.

Drakken felt like he was floating far away from himself, but not far enough away to sink into the relief of oblivion. He pressed one temple, black eating at the edges of his vision. Razor blade. Not shiny enough to distract Drakken from recognizing it as a weapon.

That made the person who was holding it his assailant, and Drakken caught his breath as he looked up into the man's eyes. Vicious eyes. The meanest he'd ever seen, even after decades of hanging around supervillains. Facial muscles taut with spite. Drakken didn't even recognize him - he could have been approximately fifty-nine percent of the other men in here.

Dizzy. He was so dizzy.

Drakken felt one cheek smack the wall - or the floor - or maybe it was the ceiling. The infernal lights finally blinked out.

_"You must be truly desperate to come to us for help," scratches through the darkness._

_He nods. _Desperate_. That's exactly what he is. "You guys are master conquerors," he explains. "I know if anyone can equip me for global conquest, it's you."_

_The blue lights bob in approval, as if they're doing the wave (a thought he keeps to himself, since it doesn't seem particularly vicious). "You - realize - of course - there are - sacrifices - that - must - be - made - if - you - are - to - become - like - us."_

_"Absolutely!" If anyone's been schooled in that area, it's him. And he'd sacrifice almost anything to appease the yearning burn. The _burn_ing _yearn _of what he has to _earn_. . . _

_No, now is not the time for rhymes. (Though, come to think of it, that rhymes, too.) The _point _is that he'll sacrifice almost anything to take over the world. His Doc Ock action figure. His favorite flannel PJs. His autographed photo of the Oh Boyz._

_"What do you want from me?" he says, straining not to plead. _

_"Your - conscience."_

_He almost snorts with relief. Oh, _that _rotten thing that's done nothing but hold him back his entire villainous career? It's like asking him to give up his appendix. It's not good for anything except making himself miserable._

_"Help yourself!" he booms. "I've got no use for it!"_

_No sooner has the last exclamation point flown out than his limbs are being surgically removed and his face flattened into nonexistence. He's heard of rubber surgery before - or plastic surgery or something-toys-are-made-out-of surgery - but this is taking it much too far. However it might enhance his villainous appearance, he still needs to be able to _move_!_

_Once he's scoured into a tiny version of The Octopus, he feels the inferno, worse than ever, and nothing else. There's no thrill, no hope, nothing he can cling to. _

_Walls slam shut around him until he's eaten by blackness. There's a voice - his own, but in a raspy monotone. "Exterminate!" it shrieks. "Ex-term-i-nate!"_

_Then the scene switches. He's Drakken again, his regular, at least vaguely human-looking self, in the middle of an ocean. Although he's no longer the hollow, mutant heart of a killing machine, the water is salty agony up his nose and down his throat. He's not the world's strongest swimmer, and he has to churn his arms to keep his head from dunking and drowning._

_His sensory receptors have shut down, but somehow he knows there's a tug on his right arm. He rotates his head - in slow-mo yet at 10,000 MPH - and there _is _no right arm. Just a shoulder and a stump. The ocean turns red with his blood, and their saltiness mingles. A dorsal fin vanishes into the distance._

_He gasps, at the pain he can't feel, at the horror of it all. "Help!" he hollers at the top of his lungs. Somehow, his bellow winds into a squeal. "Somebody help me!"_

_A fancy white yacht slices through the water toward him, out of nowhere. On its bow is a redheaded person he's never been glad to see before._

_It's a miracle! He raises his left arm - _thank goodness I'm left-handed_, he thinks in some faraway corner of his brain - and waves it to flag the boat down._

_But Kim Possible only glares at him once he's within glaring range. Her green eyes, usually so big and soft, are blasting him at ten degrees below zero. That is to say, they're really cold. Mean-looking._

_"You're right, Drakken. It _is_hard." Her words find him like heat-seeking missiles. "But _this _is easy."_

_She compounds his injuries by slugging him in the jaw. He flails backward, head somersaulting from shock, body as limp and crumpled as the seaweed tangled in his hair. Kim Possible, purported to be a teenage heroine, has left him to his fate._

_And he can't blame her._

Look again_, something orders him. He's not about to disobey now. The yacht's still there, only now the shadow cast across its deck is too tall to be Kim Possible's, even at this sunset hour. _

_With his five remaining fingers, he clutches the ladder on the side of the yacht and holds himself up. It's simple biology, really, that you lose blood when something breaks the epidermis, the layer of skin holding it back. Very scientific._

_Why doesn't that knowledge keep him from freaking out?_

_He glances upward again and goes so slack he must have lost all his bones._ _The eyes are still green, but a deeper shade of it, and narrower than Kim Possible's could be even at her most hateful. They make _her _eyes look like mere freezer burn. (Not that that's not bad enough. Ice cream should not crunch, not with anything other than chocolate-covered peanuts.)_

_"Shego!" His heart thunders, and that's double-bad when you have an open wound. "Shego, please, help me!"_

Now _he's pleading. Because if she doesn't reach down and save him, it'll be his death sentence for sure. As well as something much, much worse._

_"Yeah, I'm thinkin' not." Shego reaches down and unhooks his fingers from the ladder. He slaps water hard, and then the yacht disappears without a trace._

_All he can do is try to tread water with his feet, cradling his ravaged arm with his other hand. It'll prevent him from sinking, but he doesn't have the stamina to get back to shore. And sharks - sharks can smell blood like salesmen smell first-time buyers! They'll gravitate toward it and devour it, and unlike salesmen, won't even humor you with a warranty._

_He can try to accuse Kim Possible. He can try to accuse Shego. Yet, deep down inside him, he's smart enough to know the truth:_

_He's going to die right here in the ocean, in pain and terrified the way the Diablos' victims must have been. And all the fault falls square on him._

I want my mommy!

_He gasps and gasps, but oxygen gets stuck in his airways like an e-mail that Outlook Express just won't send. Being betrayed by both your best friend and your worst enemy must shut down your lungs entirely. All he wants is to see Shego and know he's safe with her - _

Drakken's eyes flew open. "Shego?" was the first thing he said.

There was laughter, venomous enough to be Shego's, but too male. "Not exactly."

It was that mean-faced guard, the one who called him "Scarface." Had he orchestrated the shark attack? Had he just been waiting for Drakken to regain consciousness so he could finish him off in the most inhumane way possible?!

Before Drakken could conjure a picture of mobsters riding sharks - or so much as work up a good scream - another voice, far more even (or was it "evener"? Or was that not a word?) was instructing him, "Breathe, Dr. Drakken."

Drakken did, hesitantly, the way he did after a violent bout of the hiccups, when he couldn't trust the air to flow normally yet. The faces that looked back at him were unwelcome but not hostile. One of the nicer guards and a man who must have been a doctor, clad in a crisp white lab coat that made Drakken miss his own blue one. At least it wasn't the mob he'd feared.

And no sharks.

Sharks? Where had that thought even _come_ from? They were in a landlocked prison, emphasis on _locked_. Drakken recognized the interior of his cell - the grimy-white ceiling. The cement floor. The harsh gray walls that would never let him forget what he'd done.

Drakken shivered all the way down to the pit of his. . . whatever he had left. "What - what happened?" barely made it past his lips before his eyebrow broke rank and collapsed into jagged rows.

"You were injured in a fight." The doctor barely moved his own lips to say it, as if such occurrences were all too pedestrian.

Wait - what? Drakken tried to grind that through his mental gears. Last thing he remembered, he'd been sitting in the cafeteria, and the only one he'd been fighting was the meal.

That was the thing about prison, though. One moment you were minding your own business, trying not to upchuck into your pot roast, and the next you were gushing blood.

Which was why he had to get out of here. If he'd had the strength, Drakken would have charged to the window and rattled its bars just to show that they could not contain the great and mighty Dr. Drakken! But he was tired, and the only thing rattling was his breath as he fought back the sobs.

"If you could call it a fight." That came from another guard, equal parts mean and nice, shaking his crew cut at the entire situation. "Two big guys against him."

There it was, in his voice - the dismissal. The doubt that wrote Drakken off as nothing more than a puny criminal not even tough enough to be a thug.

And that made Drakken _livid_!

"I could have taken them all!" Drakken cried. "If I'd gotten my hands on them, they would have been crying for mercy! No one messes with the unmessable-with Dr. Drakken!" He curled his fists and came off his pillow. . .

. . . where - _whoa_ - he was met by several metric tons of nausea that pushed him back down. Drakken slapped a hand over his mouth and recoiled at the bitter flavor. Dried blood was crusted and turning brown on his fingers. Drakken felt even sicker.

"I'd advise you to stay lying down," the doctor said, like Drakken hadn't figured that out yet. He was using a no-nonsense tone, and Drakken shot him a glower to show he was doing out of his own volition and not to please this white-coated know-it-all. This room full of certain college graduates paper-cut his ego with the diploma he'd never gained.

Ooh, _that _was poetic!

"Got a pretty big knot on the back of your head," the doctor continued.

Drakken moaned in agreement. _Knot_. Good word. _Hill _would have been even better. He felt just like a cartoon character with a miniature mountain rising from his scalp.

The doctor leaned over and shone a too-bright light right into Drakken's swollen eyes. "You don't appear to have a concussion, however."

"I don't," Drakken confirmed. He'd had a few concussions in his time, and their sharp, drunken grasp wasn't what was currently promising to lurch him to the floor. It was more the shaky remnants of that bad dream - and the taste on the roof of his mouth, like stale nitro - and the punishment surrounding him.

"What _happened_?" Drakken demanded again. Honestly, how did they expect a scientist to operate without the specifics? Especially those relating to his bodily fluids being forcefully ejected?

The nice guard adjusted the cold compress Drakken had just now noticed on his lump of hurt. "While you were eating, a man hit you over the head with his lunch tray."

If only Shego were here to offer up wisecracks about the density of his skull.

"And then a second guy came up and cut your arm with a razor blade."

"Shoulda just cut off all that hippie hair." The mean guard's eyes lashed at Drakken like the whips they used to beat prisoners with. (It _was _illegal to use those anymore, right? RIGHT?) "Of course, then we wouldn't have gotten to hear you screaming in your sleep."

Drakken put a self-conscious hand to his ponytail. His gaze, though, went to his right arm, exposed with his short orange sleeve rolled up to the shoulder. The flesh was still furious-red but corralled back together with stitches that were already turning black.

"Seven stitches," the doctor answered before Drakken even asked, which gave him the uncomfortable suspicion that the man might have had access to brain-scan technology.

The inadequate feeling was spreading through Drakken's chest again. That was what he got for turning his back on any of those men! If he'd been alert, had his senses tuned in and his spiky ramparts up, this wouldn't have happened, he was sure of it. He had to stick it on someone else before it slaughtered what was left of his defenses. "Who was it? And will they be punished accordingly?" Drakken snarled.

Yes. Good. Snarling was good.

"A couple of the white supremest guys," the medium-nice guard replied. "Said you mouthed off to them. And, yeah, they'll be punished. They're each facing at least a month in solitary."

Drakken hoped vaguely that they wouldn't put them in solitary together. That would defeat the whole purpose. He couldn't even nod in that manner befitting a super-smart person. It felt like moss was growing on his tongue.

"You're actually very lucky," the doctor said, gathering up his stethoscope and thermometer and various other equipment.

Drakken glared at him harder, pouring the liquid steel from his belly on the doctor. "Lucky?" He heard his own pitch slanting upward. Exactly what was so fortuitous about having your arm cut to shreds? Well, okay, maybe not to _shreds_, but close enough.

"That he didn't hit an artery or a vein," the doctor said mildly.

The nice guard came in with a grunt. "Wasn't aiming for one. He was just trying to scare you."

Now, that was something Drakken was familiar with. That had been his own M.O. for the longest time - lots of bark, no bite. Only recently had he learned how to put actual teeth behind his threats.

_Yeah, and how did that turn out for you? _Drakken could almost hear Shego saying.

"W-w-w-well, it w-w-won't w-w-work." Curse that stammer, bunching up his _w_s the way he could see the skin under his eyes folding. Hopefully he was the only one who knew that was a last-ditch effort to keep the tears in.

The nice guard leaned in as close as he could without touching. "Maybe it should," he said in a voice all warm and wise. "If a guy like this wanted you dead, you'd be dead."

In spite of the thick summery heat that felt like wearing a fur coat, Drakken was suddenly chilled. He had to wrap himself from shoulder to ankle in thin, prison-issue sheets to ward off the shivers.

From near the doorway, the mean guard spit up a laugh. If they'd been in a comic strip, his speech balloon would have had icicles hanging from it. "Yeah, too bad, huh? That would have really done the taxpayers footing the tab for your cushy little cell a favor!"

_You are utterly wrong about everything! _Drakken wanted to holler at the man. _My cell is little, but it's not cushy - and where do taxpayers come in - and - and - and - and - you just basically said, "Too bad you're not dead," didn't you?_

_Abort all programs!_

_Nononononono. . . _

While Drakken clasped his temples and commenced Operation: Do Not Have a Nervous Breakdown, the nice guard swiveled around and fixed the mean one with an ultimate-authority stare. "All right. You know what?" the nice guard said. "You're not needed here anymore."

Oooh, was that not the most crushing sentence in the English language? Drakken couldn't hide a triumphant smirk.

The nasty guard gave him one last drawn-out-forever look, eyes frigid. Then he turned and strode away without the slightest hint that his feelings had even been bruised, much less in torturous pain as Drakken had wished. The steady set to the man's shoulders was the pure hate of wishing someone dead.

Drakken recognized it. It was what had starched his own posture all Diablo Night long.

It pricked as if he had been stabbed, right through his other arm - which, as it turned out, he had. The white-coated man had stepped up and emptied a needle into his arm without even so much as a "Now, this might sting a little." Wasn't there something in the Hippocratic oath about that?

"Ow!" Drakken jerked away, both arms throbbing out of sync with each other. Neither would even lift to cradle the other now. "What was that for?"

"Tetanus shot." If the doctor didn't stop speaking so darn calmly, Drakken might have to scream just to eliminate the unnatural stillness.

And tetanus shots were such vile little things! Well, at least he had a massive bicep to look forward to in a few hours. That could only help.

"Now," the doctor straightened up, "any unusual reaction would probably stem from his skin condition. Nevertheless, I want you to call me if there is any swelling, excessive redness, pus discharge. . ."

Scientific though it was, Drakken couldn't listen to that list. The nitro behind his tonsils was threatening to be barfed up. That was probably on the list too.

As the halfway-nice guard helped the still-chattering doctor to the door, Drakken stole one more glance at his arm. Fascinating from a medical standpoint. It was going to scar, he could already tell. The properties of his blue skin couldn't quietly heal from stitches like a normal person's. It was going to turn rough and bristly, scabbed-over and incapable of feeling pain. If only he could scab over the rest of him, too.

He would have to get to work on that right away. Drakken positioned his back to the world, arms locked across his chest to secure it. He was hard. Hard and cold, yet somehow fragile, like those varieties of stone that broke off in sheets.

Did all killers feel this way?

No, he couldn't think like that. He'd better get back to - to - to - something distracting -

Oh! The bad dream! Why had a shark featured so prominently? Drakken had never been afraid of sharks. Sharks were his pets, his handy instruments of teenage-heroine disposal, even though that had never quite succeeded. He wasn't dumb enough to jump in and swim with them, but they had a mutual respect for each other.

Drakken rubbed his unshaven chin, peach-fuzzy where a felon's should have been grizzled with stubble. Even Lucre could grow a more respectable beard than Drakken could. That was basically the biggest waste of testosterone ever.

There was a sigh as the nice guard stood up. Drakken flipped back over, shot out a hand, and latched onto the man's uniform. "Don't leave." He couldn't believe the begging voice was his own.

So much for scabbing over. It was unvillainous to the twenty-third power. But the sun had sunken lower in the sky, and little spiders of darkness were creeping into his cell, and Drakken didn't want to be alone.

His guard laughed dryly. "Couldn't do that even if I wanted to, pal. I mean, unless you want someone like Mr. Grumpy to come back and keep an eye on you."

"No!" Drakken tried to shake his head, but the pain-hill overrode his attempts. "He hates me."

"Yeah, he does," the guard said, and Drakken thought that he could have at least argued the point. "But it's hard to blame him."

Drakken was baffled. What did _that _mean? He'd never met Mr. Grumpy before being thrown in here, and Drakken hadn't done anything to the man except stick out his tongue when he wasn't looking. Which he wouldn't even know about unless he was part lizard and had a third eye in the back of his head; then again, you could never be too careful these days -

"His cousin was in one of those skyscrapers that fell," the guard explained.

Drakken inhaled so sharply through his teeth he almost sucked them down his throat. "Is - is - did - he - is -"

_Some villain you are, Drakken. You can't even say it!_

"He's alive." The guard sounded strained, like he had a kidney stone or something. "They don't know if he'll walk again."

The only word in that paragraph that even mattered was _alive_.

Drakken went slack against the pillow. "Oh, is _that_ all?" The words sounded terrible the second they hit the air, he knew. But he couldn't hold back either them or the nervous fountain of laughter that sprayed out of him. He was so thoroughly relieved.

Before Drakken could giggle his way into insanity, his guard reached out and pressed on his shoulders. The touch was gone before it had the chance to do much more than tickle Drakken's panic. "Drakken," the man said firmly. "Stop. Just stop."

He did. Drakken felt his skin going rosy all the way down the neck of his jumpsuit. "I - I - I - "

His vocabulary might never have consisted of anything beyond that single letter if the guard's eyes hadn't somehow gone straight through Drakken without impaling him. The wisdom he exuded was almost soothing.

_Cousin_. Drakken had one of his own. He and Eddy hadn't been close for a long time, but they'd had fun teaming up to steal that kid's wheelchair. And, unfortunately, you could never really disconnect yourself from someone you'd heard the birds-and-bees talk with. If someone had made Eddy a paraplegic - because you weren't supposed to say _crippled _anymore - rough-and-tumble Eddy, who could only stay still long enough to repair a car -

Yes, he probably would have hated them, too.

Drakken caved in the middle, wrestling back the queasiness. "Would - would you believe it was mostly an accident?"

"_I _would," the guard said.

Someone with some faith in him! Drakken barely paused to ponder how damaging that would be for his evil reputation. Right now, he was just happy to be talked to kindly.

Drakken studied the guard as best as he could with his eyes bunching so bad he could see the hideous bags beneath them. He probably wasn't all that much older than the other guards, but he looked it. Sad eyes. Skin etched with grooves. It was a familiar look, but Drakken couldn't puzzle out why.

"There was just supposed to be chaos - and destruction - and terrible, horrible fear!" Drakken continued. His boom came out flat and empty of conviction. "I - I didn't mean - I couldn't -"

Big breath. Wheeze. "I wasn't meant to be a killer," he finished.

The guard's smile was wry. "Drakken, _none _of us are meant to be killers."

"Really?"

"Why do you think the guys in here are so screwed up?" The guard's lip lifted, but not into a sneer. It was more. . . saddened.

Well, Drakken had always sort of assumed it was the result of lockdown and lack of privacy and just plain meanness. But that was before he'd known for sure what shame was.

Not that he could vow he'd never kill anyone again. But if he did, he wanted to be absolutely, unswervingly sure of what he was doing and why. No more accidents.

"It wasn't completely one-sided, you know." The guard pressed his fingertips together. "We had to pull your cellmate off a couple of guys before he could get himself killed."

Oh. Rats.

Drakken squeezed his eyelids, groggy all of a sudden, and peered at the guard. "Was I really talking in my sleep?" he inquired. Just a simple request for information, no _please no, I thought I outgrew that_.

"Yeah, you were. My favorite part was when you started yelling that HYDRA blew up Bucky." The guard's mouth twitched.

Drakken found absolutely nothing amusing in that. His arm hurt. And Bucky was a great kid.

Still, at least he'd just blurted out Captain America's darkest wounds and not his own. Speaking of wounds, his arm hurt. . .

And - uh-oh. There was that tingly sensation down inside. Drakken pressed his legs together and gnawed his bottom lip as he glanced up at the guard.

"Um - excuse me? I need to - uh - use the - uh - the thingy." Oh, for the love of turkey, was he _blushing_? "I mean, I-need-to-pee!" Drakken blurted. "Can you not watch?"

"Now, Drakken, you know I have to watch you all the time." The guard's eyes smothered a twinkle. "But I won't peek at your personal stuff, if you know what I mean."

Boy, did he ever!

Drakken surprised himself by detecting a drop of gratitude, and he widened his eyes all big at his guard, the only movement that wouldn't explode his head with throbbing. He was going to have to do something nice for this man once Dr. Drakken ruled over the world. _Because I really am going to do that, you know, _he told the tremor in his midsection.

For now, Drakken scampered - well, wobbled - to the very-public toilet and took advantage of the moment to. . . err. . . relieve himself. (Sheesh, he blushed just _thinking_ that!) Lucre would look the other way if you told him to - Lucre would do anything you told him to, as long as it didn't involve shutting up - but the other men clustered around as if Drakken were their weekly entertainment.

"Woo-hoo!" they would leer. "Go, Bluiser! Do you have blue -"

And that was far as he wanted to remember. Farther, actually. Must have been why they had a separate prison for women. Drakken would have gone into an embarrassment coma if he'd had to use the bathroom in front of Shego.

Memories of his sidekick softened Drakken's jaw. Shego had gotten a lesser sentence, so she might be free to break him out in about sixty years. He would only be 101 by then.

That done, Drakken re-zipped, flushed, and made his way over to the sink to wash his hands. His reflection had very obviously been crying. He angrily slapped away incriminating tears, but he couldn't hide the red mist that clouded the glare he was attempting to aim at himself. That wouldn't be gone for hours.

Even now, a fresh batch of tears gathered in his eyes, jabbing at their tenderness, and Drakken knew his recovery hadn't even begun yet. He appeared to have aged five years since that morning. Ten since his transfer to the fed pen. Twenty since his arrest.

And the even-more-austere angles of his cheekbones and the loss of some around-the-chin chubbiness didn't leave him looking grown-up and masculine as Drakken had always dreamed. Just old. The lines bracketing his mouth bore a strong resemblance to the nice guard's, and in that instant Drakken recognized them:

They were the markings of someone who still cared.

No! Drakken stomped his foot with all of his dwindling strength. He wasn't _supposed _to care, darn it! He wasn't _supposed_ to!

But the sky outside the jail-striped window was turning blacker and blacker. They must have been eating dinner instead of lunch, Drakken deduced. His sense of time was all kerfuffled.

Who would have thought an evil genius who thrived in the dark would miss the sunlight? An hour a day was all they got. At least during the day, Drakken could be bitter and resentful and everything a supervillain was called to be. At night, however -

Drakken watched himself go a shade as pale as Shego in the mirror. The crimson stain on his sleeve made him shudder. The first night he'd been here, he'd woken up so drenched in sweat, for a moment he was sure he'd wet the bed for the first time since sixth grade.

How could it look so much like his lair and not feel the slightest bit like home? Not "homey" - that was never the goal of an evil lair - but like he was the one in charge of the scary dark.

This darkness, the one they tossed him into with a jabbering lunatic for company, wasn't friendly at all. And, though Drakken would never have admitted it to another living soul, fear went with him everywhere. Not a cubic inch of this ominous place was safe.

Not to mention how cramped the cell was, no matter how big it seemed to grow at night. Surely keeping a claustrophobic man in a space like this fell under cruel and unusual punishment.

Drakken braced a hand on either side of the sink and felt the pain wave up both arms. This angst was counterproductive. He had to fight it. He was Dr. Drakken, The Vicious, The Ruthless. The Wounded. Was his blood still spattered on the cafeteria floor?

See? At night, Drakken forgot that he was tough.

It wasn't the almost-certainty of another scar that bothered Drakken. He already looked like he was made from a bunch of leftover parts. This one, at least, was in a very strategic location, where you could flip up your sleeve and display it if you wanted to look all gangsta and then hide it again when you didn't. Much less stare-worthy than the one right across his cheek.

No, it was the newfound grasping that he'd torn families apart. _There _was a dimension Drakken hadn't allowed himself to consider until this moment. Not only had he put people in the ground, but families were grieving, thanks to him. Those who had lost their lives were lucky compared to the ones who would suffer for the rest of theirs.

The whole thing was like an onion, Drakken decided. It came apart to reveal more and more layers, and it made him cry. Why wouldn't it? It wasn't like he was some kind of. . .

Yes, he was some kind of. . . Because there was still something inside him, and it was still hungry, and if the world wouldn't provide him with relief, he would still pry it out of its cold, dead hands.

Drakken pressed a hand to his middle and swallowed a round of retches. It figured. It just figured. All he saw should have been his domain. Now he could barely control his own body.

He scooped up his thoughts and forced them out of that perilous corridor, back toward the mean guard's insults. They made fury prickle up his shoulder blades, but at least he could still get the air he needed so bad.

Hippie hair? That was a laugh (though Drakken didn't feel much like chuckling over it). He'd never been trying to make any kind of statement with his baby mullet - he just looked really weird with short hair. And his neck felt naked and tender, a flashing neon sign that read, COME ATTACK ME.

And as for whether it made him look like a criminal - he couldn't wrap his brain around that, either. There were plenty of guys in here with mullets, or even wilder styles with names like "cornrows" and "dreadlocks." Some of them were nasty, but some were more like him: just trying to survive. The man with the deadly razor blade and the incision of a sneer had had - if his blurring vision had been reliable - pretty short hair, and it didn't make him any less terrifying.

His hair length was fine. What was too long was the list of people he had hurt. Kim Possible. The buffoon with the instantly-forgettable name. James. Ann. (That one _really _stunk; Drakken had always sort of liked Ann.) The mad-scientist-in-training little twins. All his henchmen. Nakasumi. Eric.

Shego.

_Didn't you once vow you'd kill anyone who ever hurt Shego?_

Maybe the mean guard was right. Maybe Razor Guy _should _have slit his throat.

A scream gathered in said throat, and Drakken chomped into his knuckles to contain it. What had he just thought? He didn't want to die! He was scared to death of death, no pun intended. After all, hadn't he freaked out like a coward when the buffoon had seemingly descended from the sky with revenge written on his face?

Suddenly dry down to his gums, Drakken made for the water fountain. He gulped rusty water into his mouth, which soaked it up like a sponge and left his lips as unbearably dry and cracked as they had been before.

Yes, he feared dying. But there was something else he feared more, and that was spending the rest of his life in this hopeless place. Surely no afterlife could be more hellish than Cell Block D.

Then there was the matter of the Diablos' victims. He'd used them as sacrifices for his own personal gain. That was a debt that demanded his life.

But it wasn't a debt Drakken was willing to pay. Not now. It was too impulsive, especially considering the extreme probability that Lucre would be up and out of here in a few years, and the fact that _this_ guard, unlike the others, didn't want him dead. And, as yellow-bellied as it made him (despite the real blue color of his abdomen), Drakken was still too afraid of pain, although if it was pain to end his pain, it might be worth it.

None of that mattered, though, because someone would be arriving to bust him out any day now. Any hour. Any minute. And he had to be alive for that, and he had to be alive to conquer the world.

It all boiled down to that. Drakken had been a loser his entire life, and underdog appeal was only effective on _Rocky_. Even though he'd done hideous things on the path to world domination, Drakken-on-a-throne was more enticing than ever. Before, he could have quit - maybe, possibly, if he'd wanted to. Now -

The world would never take him back after what he'd done. He'd have to rule them with an iron fist, forcing the love and devotion that would save him. Drakken truly had no choice. A man could never outrun his destiny. (Somebody wise had said that. Or was it just Monkey Fist?)

The skin under Drakken's eyes bunched. He felt like he was stuck in a corner again, only this time the men who'd edged him in had his own face, his own build.

He was the monster in his own nightmares.

And monsters didn't sit around mourning anyone, not even themselves. Drakken hissed out several rapid-fire grunts, snatched up his pillow, and hurled it to the ground in rage. Rage was more villainous than despair, and Drakken had already determined villainy was the only way he'd survive.

Yet, even as he stared down at the dingy whiteness of the pillowcase against the stark gray of the floor, that rage ebbed right out of him, leaving Drakken trembling in his prison sneakers. He flopped back onto his lumpy cot and dug his heels into the side.

Funny. If Drakken were honest with himself, he had to admit he'd always thought if anyone died as a result of his conquest, it would be at Shego's hands. She certainly seemed to have no qualms with taking a life.

Of course, Drakken hadn't thought _he'd _have any qualms with it, either, minus the occasional squeamish squirm of his stomach. But having actually done it was so much different than theorizing or threatening it. Seeing them on the news, looking into those eyes, now forever unseeing. . . it had shaken him in a way ruthless despots weren't supposed to be shaken.

And the knowledge that the victims weren't the enemies who had made his life miserable but a handful of innocents really stuck in his craw.

He lifted his head to confirm his guard was still there. Because, all at once, his brain was filled with dark, heavy, dangerous things that not even the vile Dr. Drakken wanted to be left alone with.

Yep. Still there. _Phew_.

Drakken rolled over onto his tummy, which was gurgling up a storm, and found himself staring at a thick hardback dictionary. Oh, right. He'd been storing that under his pillow - which would explain why he woke up every morning as stiff and sore as if he'd been camping on the floor of the Grand Canyon.

Still, Drakken knew all the lines in his face were brightening as he took in the dictionary. He dug through it every day, looking for suitably awful (or at least awful-sounding) names to call his tormentors. He would never be the strongest or the quickest man in Cell Block D, but perhaps he could become the most well-read.

That was his _only_ defense, Drakken realized with a full-body wiggle. He had to face the facts: As high as his IQ was, he didn't have any of what Shego called "street smarts." Drakken didn't know what memorizing the location of certain streets had to do with not getting beat up by human gorillas - but, then, what _did _he know at this point?

He lifted the book, both arms screaming in pain until he got it situated on his ever-expanding lap. And, _ooooh_, there was that red mist again, this time visible from inside his eyes as Drakken squinted to see through it. Nehh. Probably not good. Likely very bad.

Gasping to hold back reflexive tears, Drakken opened the dictionary right to the middle. To the _M_s, which, coincidentally, happened to be the first letter in the word "middle." With unsteady thumbs, he flipped the pages. Drakken didn't catch on that he was searching for "murder" until his eyes landed on it and the bile collided with the stomach acid.

_Murder, n._

_The deliberate killing of another person. It is distinguished from other forms of homicide_ (that was a general term encompassing any time one person ended another's life)_by the elements of malicious forethought and the lack of lawful justification. _

Do. Not. Faint. Again.

Well, there must have been enough lawful justification for the charges to be talked down to manslaughter, and that was judicial enough for Drakken. It was the first one he was concerned about.

_Malicious forethought_. Had he had that?

Drakken curled into a ball on his cot and repositioned the cold compress. And closed his eyes and wracked his brain for the reasons he'd unleashed the Diablos on the world.

Because he'd wanted to be perceived as a genuine threat. He'd wanted the type of fear that led to surrender. He'd wanted injuries, serious ones, to add to his credibility. But fatalities?

Drakken couldn't answer that, and it scared him worse than any of the other men in here. At least he was provided with occasional relief from them. He could never be free of himself.

He'd just had to design the Diablos to be lethal so they could take out Kim Possible. And what a brilliant job he'd done, if he had to say so himself! They'd been the perfect weapons.

Too perfect.

Yes, that was his problem: he was too smart for his own good. Smart enough to put together that if he _had_ managed to blast Kim Possible and her annoying little family away, _that _would have been murder.

No, no, no! Drakken flattened his fingers against his pulsating forehead. There was _plenty _of justification for killing Kim Possible!

Drakken opened his eyes, but he couldn't lose sight of another pair. Almond-shaped like Shego's and black like his, as if the little Japanese girl had been genetically engineered to be as heart-wrenching as possible. Whatever "icide"s he'd committed, Drakken was glad she wasn't one of them.

His stomach hurt. Really hurt.

Drakken curved over it and wrapped his arms around it. They almost met back over his spine. He had to wrestle his mind out of this dark crevice it had gotten wedged into. He had to remember the fun side of being a delinquent.

Sneaking into a building, tiptoeing down a hall, taking something _that wasn't yours_ and stuffing it in your lab coat - how he missed that lab coat! - and creeping back out the way you'd come in. Holding your breath the entire time and then letting it out in one big whoosh once you'd successfully stolen your top-secret weapon. Blasting huge holes in the sides of buildings. Ranting and raving before an audience that was truly captive.

And, of course, how it felt to have Kim Possible at your mercy, even if only for a moment. That was better than fun. That was heavenly.

But Drakken couldn't settle. He couldn't get over the creepy-crawlies between his shoulder blades. It was as though they were watching him, the ones he killed so carelessly - no, worse than carelessly - _accidentally_.

He began to rock, back and forth, faster and faster. Somebody was whispering in his head to _just rock, Drewbie. Everything will be fine if you just rock._

Drakken couldn't figure out if it was his mother, saying it to reassure him, or Shego, saying it to mock him. Their voices blared so loud, like bagpipes, that he couldn't hear what they actually sounded like.

Nonetheless, he kept rocking until he did the inevitable nose-plant into his pile of sheets. Drakken sighed through the nostrils submerged in his own stink. He'd love it if Shego were here to do sarcastic commentary on this place. She would have shared Drakken's disgust.

_Disgust_. Good word. Because as Drakken looked around at the toilet that might as well have been on television, at the punishing confines, at the empty cells that would soon fill with creeps of the highest order, disgust was all he could feel.

Some of that disgust even extended to himself.

Because, as uncomfortable as Drakken was with the idea of people as sacrifices, when he stacked it up against how much he hurt, it didn't matter at all.

**~All good copyright things:**

***Imagine Dragons are copyright themselves.**

***_Doctor Who_ is copyright BBC. Daleks were created by some dude named Terry Nation, who must have been awesome. . . . 'cause he created Daleks.  
**

***Captain America and Bucky are copyright Marvel. Who now belongs to Disney. Who also owns everyone else in this chapter that you recognize from canon. :P**

**'Till next time. ~**


	14. Last September

**~Some more fluffy stuff this time around. Hope you like.  
**

******The occasional grammar mistake and/or non-word is meant to capture Drakken's "voice." Yes, and he's so good with cars that he doesn't even know how many carburetors one needs. XD~ **

_Blub blub. Blub blub. Blub blub._

Dr. Drakken grinned his wicked grin as he blew another long stream of air into his straw. That was the only good thing about Shego being late today: he could blow bubbles in his chocolate milk, and she wasn't around to ride him for it. (_Ride_ being the very latest teen slang for _nag_.)

Two of the henchmen plodded by just then, each with a carburetor slung over their shoulders. As if they were beach towels. As if a fall _wouldn't _have shattered them into pieces that maybe not even Drakken could have repaired!

Drakken spit his straw out long enough to bark, "Handle those _gently_, you big clods! They're very delicate pieces of equipment!"

The henchmen looked hurt, but they switched to a both-hands hold. At least their lumbering pace didn't leave them in very much danger of tripping.

He gave orders, and they followed them. It was science, a cause and effect that never failed to lift Drakken's spirits, especially since it was like that with exactly no one else.

So Drakken snapped back over his shoulder to the henchman behind him, "Noah, set the engine down in front of the lube - lubricat - the pole thingy that goes up and down! _Carefully_! You'd better not scratch the Doom-Vee's paint job!" And to another passing by, he added, "Marc, retrieve my toolbox! I shall be needing it before long!"

In a few minutes, all would be in place for Drakken to continue with his greatest plan yet! And all without him having to lift a finger. That was what a tough taskmaster he was.

Drakken tried to ignore the fact that it was also because he was just plain not strong enough to lift any of the machinery.

No, that didn't matter. The Doom-Vee, his latest harbinger of international catastrophe, was a guarantee that he would go down in history as the most powerful man on Earth. Granted, Drakken didn't know much about cars, but they were machines, like the rest of his Doomsday devices. Though he was more comfortable with chemicals, he'd had luck with machines in the past.

Occasionally.

Grrhk. A doubt. Drakken pounced on it and laser-fried it until it begged for mercy.

Because that was what tough taskmasters did.

Drakken took another long sip of chocolate milk, refreshingly cool on this still-fairly-hot day. It was Labor Day, the day most people accepted as the unofficial start to fall, although somebody with Drakken's intelligence knew autumn was still two weeks away. The temperature was still warm enough to activate the henchmen's sweat glands as they huffed and puffed under their burdens.

But Drakken was an experienced season-watcher (which sounded much better than "getting kind of old"). And he knew that, soon enough, the leaves would change and Mother would be calling to ask if he was wearing his long underwear and clicking her tongue if he wasn't. You talk about _riding_. . .

School would be starting soon, if it hadn't already. And that meant Kim Possible was that much busier, that much less likely to stop him, since - ha-ha! - she still had to go to high school.

Drakken resumed the wicked grin. And high school _stunk_. He could testify to that.

He suckled at his straw, which now produced nothing. Blast! He must have come so close to the bottom that the straw was no longer effective. Drakken tossed the thing back over his shoulder, raised the bottle to his lips, and chugged the last liquid layer - say _that _three times fast!

_Ahhh_, was that _satisfying_! Gosh, he loved chocolate milk. Well, in the first place, he loved milk, partially just because it came from cows. And cows amused Drakken, the way they just stared at you with their bovine stupidity - sort of like the henchmen. Then they would moo, which the henchmen generally didn't, unless they were all slightly sleep-deprived and playing one of those impromptu games Shego never joined in.

Anyway, milk was thick and rich to start with, and then you added _cocoa_ to it? Utopia for taste buds.

Drakken rubbed a contented stomach and shoved the happy yellow bottle with the friendly brown bunny on it to the side. (He'd have to remember to recycle it later - had to keep the Earth spotless for when he was overlord, after all.) Then and only then did he fish out his blueprints for the Doom-Vee. Drakken had tipped far too many glasses over onto blueprints and wailed in despair as his chosen fluid intake blotted out his genius.

The Doom-Vee was brilliant in its complicated simplicity. It resembled a normal, gray, tank-shaped car, because Drakken had learned that paintings of himself on the side and weapons stored in plain sight brought Kim Possible down on him so _fast_! The only thing that could have possibly been labeled suspicious was the license plate reading "DRD," and there was a 1-in-17,576 chance of that being a natural occurrence anyway.

One flick of a button, however, and it would sprout doom rays, quadruple-barreled laser blasters, and shrink guns. (Or was that _stink_ guns? Hard to read his own handwriting.) _Those _were a piece of cake. He had several just waiting to be installed. It was the actual car parts Drakken wasn't too sure about. Oh, well, he'd just have to wing it. How hard could it be?

And then he, Dr. Drakken, would drive it! Actually drive it, and it wouldn't matter that he didn't have a license. It wouldn't matter if he hit a fire hydrant, because the Doom-Vee was tough enough to take it, and, besides, he was _out _to stir up as much mayhem as possible.

Nearly giddy with excitement, Drakken flew to the bathroom mirror and repositioned a shoulder pad that had made its way down to his elbow. With Shego absent, he was the smallest, stringiest person around, and that didn't give off the air of superiority he was hoping for.

Neither did the milk mustache. It wasn't a professional look in the slightest, having cocoa moo smeared all over your upper lip -

Drakken's sleeve stopped in mid-swipe. Double blast, and a darnety-heck to boot! Had that phrase just gone through his brain? _Cocoa moo_? How unprofessional could you get?

Yet the words made Drakken giggle - err, chortle. And it was very important to keep your sense of humor. Laughter was good for your health, he remembered reading in several of those waiting-room-type magazines.

. . . but now he had to do something sinister to balance it out. Drakken headed back for his makeshift room and sank onto his saggy mattress to survey his surroundings.

This abandoned lair on the outskirts of Middleton wasn't much, but it was all he'd been able to pay rent on after Operation Catastrophic Doom had gone belly-up like the fish you hadn't fed in months. Plenty of hapless villagers to terrorize, and it was convenient to pop into town for supplies - Drakken was just constantly worried that one of these days he was going to run into the buffoon or even Kim Possible herself.

Still, the last owner had left behind a couple dozen spears that appeared to hold great promise. It was almost starting to feel like home, even if the only security system he'd been able to afford was shockingly low-tech, with spiked clubs and giant mallets. And even without his wonderful, king-sized-and-then-some red bed. This one wouldn't even bounce right.

It was the spears that Drakken was eying now. Famous and deadly tools throughout the ages. The native peoples of South America would coat theirs in poison-arrow-frog slime and stab their enemies with it. Sounded so lusciously evil Drakken had wanted to try it, but the Central Headquarters of Aquatic Supervillainy (CHOAS for short) were fresh out of poison arrow frogs, and HenchCo's were outrageously expensive.

Sigh.

Drakken swaggered his way up to the spears. Intimidating enough, he supposed, long and thin with peaks polished to a shine. A rubbery grip around the area where metal and wood met. Just crying out to be touched.

He grasped it around the middle and hoisted it into the air. The sun caught on the tip and gleamed in a fashion that could come straight from a movie. Drakken's heartbeat raced in awe, pounding against the walls of his chest. He was actually holding it!

"I stab at thee, Kim Possible!" Drakken thundered - and lunged forward, holding the point straight out away from him like Mother always warned him to do with knives. And then he stopped with the spear ten inches away from where he was picturing Kim Possible to be. And then he pictured -

Ew. Ugh. You know what? He was never going to think about that again.

The spear wobbled in Drakken's hands and fell to the ground. He jumped away from it, back contorted so the thing wouldn't so much as touch him. Drakken and sharp objects had had a rocky relationship ever since the day he'd forgotten he was holding one and scratched his face and it. . . eh-heh. . . hadn't been pretty. Luckily, Shego had been there, and she'd kept her wits about her enough to load him in the car and drive him to the hospital.

She wasn't here _now_, though, and that almost made Drakken afraid to return the spear to its resting place. If he were to cut himself now, he would have only himself and the henchmen to rely on. He couldn't be certain to what extent he could trust either.

Worse than that, it was lonely. The henchmen were pleasant enough and they played a mean game of Parcheesi, but Drakken was bursting inside to talk to someone who could _very nearly _match his intellect.

Sheesh, three o'clock in the afternoon already? Where _was_ Shego? She was going to hear it from him when she did show up -

No, she was going to hear it from him _now_! Drakken bounded to his feet, cringed away from the spears, and stalked down the hall with his tendons tightening. He had a phone call to make.

He stomped his way out to the main room, where he tossed the cocoa moo - ERRRGH, _chocolate milk!_ - bottle into the recycling with a loud crash that almost - _almost_ - made him feel better. The henchmen glanced up from their workloads to gawk at him, and suddenly that bothered him. Suddenly everything bothered him.

"Get back to assembling that framework!" Drakken commanded. "I want the Doom-Vee shipshape by Wednesday. Well, you know, car-shaped," he added. His henchmen weren't ones for figures of speech.

Not like him, who knew all about greasing your elbows and putting your nose to the grindstone and. . .

Anyway. Drakken grabbed the receiver of the old rotary phone and dialed Shego's number. For once, he was grateful for his skinny little fingers - they didn't get caught in the numbers as easily.

_Ring ring. Ring ring. _

As the other end of the line jangled, Drakken pondered what approach to take with Shego. Should he be angry or charming? Angry or charming? He was leaning toward charming, since it took less muscles to smile than to frown - although, that hardly mattered, since this conversation was going to take place over the phone. His video transmitter was still back at his haunted island lair, probably being looted by seals. . . or whoever looted island lairs these days. . .

"Hey. I was hoping you'd call." Shego's voice was liquid when she answered.

It lit up something in Drakken's chest. He heard his own voice squeak when he said, "Shego?"

Okay, that wasn't angry _or _charming. More like "pathetically lonely."

A loooooooong silence.

There was a moan, and Shego's words solidified. "Oh, no, not _you_."

The light in Drakken's chest mutated into pain. He layered bitterness over it. "Who else were you expecting?" he said harshly. The possibilities stung like the flu vaccine.

"The guy I met at the beach on Saturday," Shego said. "Gotta take advantage of the last part of summer." There was a dreamy quality to it, almost a giggle, and in that moment Shego didn't sound like his kick-tail sidekick. She sounded almost as young and flighty as Kim Possible, with no earthly idea that she might have been opening herself up to some slimy, slithery thing, like a. . . lawyer (because, as every true scientist was aware, snakes weren't actually slimy).

"You met him two days ago?"

"Good job. You can do math." Now her voice hissed right into vapor form.

"And you gave him your _phone _number? You don't know anything about him! What if he turns out to be -"

"A supervillain bent on world domination?" Shego teased.

Drakken dug his fingers into the wall. Somewhere inside him were the words, _He might hurt you, Shego. And I want you safe_. But they were encrypted, coded in a language his tongue could only translate as sputtering and stammering.

"Look, don't tie up my line for too long," Shego said, leaping to the infuriating conclusion that Drakken's silence signified he'd been beaten. "Talk fast."

To his surprise, Drakken found he'd retained some of his glow. It shone through now. Ooh, he was _very_ good at talking fast! "I-was-just-wondering-what-time-you-planned-to-come-in-today!" he rushed.

"I don't."

Drakken's toes tangled inside his boots. "What is that supposed to mean?" Absolutely nothing on him was glowing now, he knew.

"It's Labor Day," Shego said. Disdainfully.

"Precisely my point!" Drakken bellowed, and then clamped his jaw down hard. Was that her plan, to confound him with nonlogicability? "Today of all days you should be here, doing your part to make my genius scheme a reality - "

Shego sliced off the end of his sentence with the start of her own, thrust at him with the pointiness of one of those spears. "It's a holiday, Dr. D!"

"Dedicated to labor!" Drakken registered the vocal crack, but he paid it no heed.

"No, it's a federal holiday. Day _off._ We always used to have our Evil Family Picnic today!"

A pang ate straight through Drakken like so much sulfuric acid. The Evil Family Picnic. Yet another luxury he could no longer afford. And would have been able to, if he hadn't spent all of the money he'd acquired from Stoppable on Operation Catastrophic Doom. Shego was right: it had been a waste. And now Drakken wanted to hit himself.

Well, not really. That would have hurt too bad.

"Because it was an easy day to remember!" Drakken groped for his boom. "Besides, we always worked at least a _little_ on my schemes at the picnic!"

"Yeah, and you bossed us around, and you fell on top of me during the Three-Legged Race and you got sick winning the pie-eating contest." It wasn't a snarl Drakken heard anymore. It was a smirk, which was worse. A snarl was punching you in the face and getting it over with. A smirk was like a splinter. You couldn't dig it out, and nobody else saw it even when you pointed straight at it.

Drakken thought, with longing, of his shiny fake-gold five-time-champion medal, also left behind at his old lair. Now he had no money - no record of his achievements - and no companionship from his sidekick, who had hit him up for money after all when he was loaded with dough, even though she had plenty of her own. Now that Drakken was bankrupt again, would Shego -

Would she -

Labor Day! What a stupid, _stupid_ idea!

"Why isn't it named Stay-at-Home-and-Goof-Off-Day?" Drakken shot back. "It's very misleading!" Why, when he conquered the world, such deceptive titles would be a thing of the past!

"I don't make 'em, I just call 'em," Shego said. She was teeth-grindingly calm. As usual.

Drakken swallowed hard. "So does this mean you're not coming in?" He felt as if he were a second-grader again, cautiously crossing a wide span of wood chips to ask another kid to play. They'd always said no. Always.

"Well. . . is there something super-exciting happening over there today?" Shego asked. She had a playful tingle to her voice, which either meant she was hopeful or awaiting an opportunity for her next zinger.

Drakken chose to believe the former. His own tingles shimmered up his arms, and he tingled even more to share them with someone. "Construction of the Doom-Vee is coming along swimmingly!" he reported. That was a bit of an exaggeration - but so what? "And. . . I bought chocolate milk!"

He was proud of himself for not saying "cocoa moo." For not even _thinking _it until this very second. Shego should have come over for that reason alone.

There was a dark silence.

"I'll be in tomorrow, Doc," Shego said.

Drakken was unsure whether to bang his head against the phone or jump for joy. On the one hand, she was coming in tomorrow, so she wasn't going to abandon him, even though he wasn't rich anymore. On the _other_, that was eighteen endless hours away! How was he supposed to stand it until then?

As if she'd read his mind, Shego added crisply, "Stop twisting the phone cord around your finger. Go back to your evil car thing."

Only then did Drakken take notice of how cold his index finger was and see that, indeed, he had it wrapped up like a birthday present. He yanked it free, feeling its beautifully painful throbs. Beneath the glove, Drakken knew his fingertip had gone from baby-blue to periwinkle.

"How did you know?" he said.

"I just know."

It was true. She did.

Drakken heaved a long sigh that he hoped would prick at Shego's conscience and forced himself to smile. Less muscles required should have meant the movement was easier to do, but he had to physically lift the corners of his mouth with his fingers. "I'm choosing to be happy, Shego," he told her. And himself. "Because, you know, it takes less muscles to smile than to frown."

"_Fewer _muscles," Shego said.

The back of Drakken's neck burned. Where did she get off, correcting him all the time, making it clear he'd messed up? When all he wanted was not to get anything wrong, not ever? "Sometimes, Shego, I just - gghk! Do we even speak the same language?"

"Sure we do," Shego answered, a little too quickly. "It's just that I speak it correctly."

"Shego, you - "

"Choosing to be happy, remember?" Drakken could picture her eyes sparkling in mischief.

He took a breath so deep it gurgled. ". . . you wonderful woman who I am not thinking about strangling at all."

Shego gave another actual giggle. It would have been sort of sweet if it hadn't been edged with _ha-ha-you-loser_. "See you tomorrow, chief."

_Chief_. Drakken liked how that rang in his ears, even if it was said in half-sarcasm. "Promise you're coming in tomorrow?" he ventured, eyes locked on the front door. Imagining her walking through it, hair swinging and twitches tipping her lips, was the only thing that kept him from squeaking again.

"Uh, yeah. I mean, unless a meteor falls on my apartment in the night - "

"Don't even JOKE about that!" Drakken cried. His throat closed up at the thought. He _needed _Shego!

"Sheesh, all right, calm down." Shego's tone dropped into its calming mode. "Yeah, I promise I'll be in tomorrow."

Relief melted Drakken down against the wall, and his in-charge villainous self was able to take over from there. "Thank you, Shego," he thundered, all business. "Oh, and, uh - Happy Labor Day."

He couldn't help that last part.

Shego mumbled something along the lines of "same to you," followed by mutterings about having probably missed Beach Boy's call and getting a splitting headache.

Drakken hoped it wasn't a migraine. Ew, he hated those. He extended that hope into a wish that she would have enough Tylenol at her apartment to get her through to morning, when he could hand her some himself.

And, as he placed the phone back on its cradle, he couldn't stop himself from hoping that Beach Boy _wouldn't _call. If he were a decent fellow, this young man would have been concerned about taking things too fast. And if he weren't -

Drakken rubbed his hands together, sly and sinister and not even trying this time. If he weren't, then Drakken would have to introduce the guy to his security system. As much as he didn't like the idea of spearing or clubbing someone to death, he would do anything to protect Shego.

And it wouldn't even necessarily have to be to _death_. You could rough him up a bit, scare him, and then he could run away and somebody would call a doctor for him.

Yeah. It was okay. It was all okay again.

Until Drakken replaced the receiver and heard the click of finality. Then his outline of today was marred like someone had scribbled over it with a black crayon.

He'd worked the henchmen on a federal holiday. An unfamiliar knot cramped Drakken's muscles, a sensation that could have almost been called guilt. Well, it could also almost have been called anti-gravity sickness, but such a term would have been incorrect.

No, neither one was accurate, Drakken decided. This wasn't guilt he felt. It was nerves - a far lesser crime for a supervillain. His henchmen were about as bright as a twenty-watt bulb - and that wasn't very bright - but what if they figured out they'd slaved away on an afternoon they were legally entitled to have off? What if they got mad? Drakken had never seen the henchmen mad before, and with their massive bulks, it was a queasy prospect. Worse, what if it made them upset enough to hand in their resignations? Where would _that _leave him?

Alone with a bunch of car parts he couldn't lift, that was where.

Drakken glowered down at the floor as though it were responsible for anything other than coming between him and the dirt. It was stupid, he knew, but the smudges on the floor couldn't glare back at him the way everyone else in the world could. And did.

A responsible employer didn't wear his workers down to the bone. He was going to have to make it up to them.

Yep. There was no guilt in that. Just good business sense.

Drakken scrambled over to the enormous doors that scissored jaggedly down the middle and plastered his body to them. The metal chilled through his lab coat. Yes, there was just enough of a nip in the air now to justify a fire.

Saliva production increased. And what would a fire be without. . . .?

Drakken jumped onto the box whose height only pushed him to his shortest henchman's level and cleared his throat in his best I'm-the-boss fashion. "Attention, my loyal henchmen!" he thundered.

The henchmen stiffened instantly, arms pressed to their sides. Drakken paused to feed off the power for a second before continuing.

"In honor of Labor Day, we are going to knock off construction of the Doom-Vee early this evening!" Drakken jabbed a finger into the air to emphasize the Great Importance of his words. "_However_, I have another assignment for you!"

The whole room seemed to be waiting for its next breath as Drakken spun around and stabbed the finger at the only henchman he trusted with a lighter. "Adam, go start a fire in the fireplace! Marc, fetch our inventory of graham crackers! Noah can handle the marshmallows and, Bill, I want you on chocolate!"

"S'mores?" Fred asked. It came out more like "Sh'moresh?" because his mouth was in a perfect O. So were the rest of the henchmen's, for that matter.

Drakken permitted a millimeter of a smile. "Yes, indeed! S'mores. Now get to it!"

As the henchmen scuttled off (he liked that word, _scuttled_), Drakken affected a swaggering walk up to the front of the Doom-Vee. His newest baby. The framework had been assembled so that it could actually stand up on its own, and the engine even lay nestled under where the hood would be. Scientifically curious, Drakken ran a hand across that engine and came back with what he knew was an oily glove, though their shades of black were virtually indistinguishable.

Now there was just the rest of it to be put together. The lasers and ray guns had already been assembled - and were being stored in a corner with "Do Not Touch Unless You Are Dr. Drakken!" signs hanging from them - but where could he locate the more lackluster tools? Like wrenches and hammers and nails and saws and wrenches. . . wait. . . hadn't he said that already?

Drakken rubbed his face in thought and then winced at the warm dribble that clung to it. He'd forgotten about that darn oil.

Yet, when Drakken examined his reflection in the shiny pupil of one of the tires still awaiting use, he liked what he saw. The smear of oil down his cheek had him looking down-and-dirty and manly and very involved in what he was doing. Even made his hair stand up on end. Well, more so than it usually did. Drakken filed away a promise to buy one of those over-the-shoulder mechanic jumpsuits. Then he'd _truly _look like a grease primate!

Immersion in the role gave him confidence. Ah, he'd find tools somewhere! This place had been an abandoned garage before he'd moved in, so surely there were some tools lying around. Garages were where they fixed cars. And didn't every father keep a toolbox in their garage?

He rejected the lump in his throat.

Soon the crummy little shack was filled with crackling wood, warm air, and the pleasant type of smoke that wasn't the result of an exploding lair. Pure joy goose-bumping his arms, Drakken hopped, knees first, onto a chair he remembered too late was springless.

_Yee-owch_! The thing had less winter padding than _he_ did! Drakken felt a scowl forming as he massaged his sore thigh, hoping, hoping, hoping that the pain wouldn't spread to his back.

But when the henchmen showed up again, arms laden with supplies for s'mores, the scowl's habitat was threatened and it went extinct. Drakken thrust his nose into the air, already sniffing the fresh, grainy scent of the graham crackers, the sugared fluff of the marshmallows, and the rich chocolate of the. . . well, the chocolate. None of them could have been stale, either, because he'd bought groceries for this new hideout just last week.

Drakken skipped merrily over to the long tables and swiped his blueprints off to make room for the ingredients. It was no longer possible to control his prancing feet, and without being asked, he flew back to the kitchen and retrieved a nice big stack of paper plates. Oh, was there any grander way to end the day than by eating a few of these scrumptious morsels? It thrilled him, all the way down his spine.

The henchmen were grinning, too, and nudging each other with meaty elbows that would have knocked Drakken over. It made Drakken draw himself up into a stiff, upright, tall-as-he-could position. "Special Boss Dibs on going first!" he declared.

There was general agreement from the henchmen, of course. No Shego there to challenge him.

And nobody he had to shove away to get to the head of the table. A tingle sparked through Drakken until it could have been mistaken for static electricity, only on the inside. He was sure his hair must have been in precise, straight-up-and-down points by that. . . point.

Then he stared down at his plate as the terrible, terrible lack of some other points occurred to him.

Didn't that just figure? The skewers were still at his island lair. Sticks were flammable, and Drakken didn't anticipate that being a good mix with the henchmen's clumsiness.

All right, all right. . . maybe there was _some _uncoordination on his part, too.

"Uh, boss?" one of the henchmen began. "We don't have any - "

"I know!" Drakken spit back at him and pulled his arms across his chest to mope. The presence of the henchmen, brooding with him, should have eased his burden. It didn't. He was as prickly as a cactus. Pointy as a spear -

_A spear!_

Drakken felt a light bulb _much _brighter than 20 watts flicker on over his head. "Be right back!" he cried, stumbling over his own boots as he zoomed down the endless hallway toward his room.

He was panting by the time he arrived, but he managed to wrestle half-a-dozen spears under each arm. Unfortunately, two steps into his trek to the door, one of the spears shifted out of place and ripped a hole in the seam of his lab coat. Barely missed nicking skin. Would have been a whole lot worse than a nick, actually.

_Euaaaaaawuggghheeeh_. Drakken cut his nervous giggle short and let the spears clatter to the ground. No, there could be no messing around here. Not without Shego around to shuttle him to the ER if need be.

Drakken adjusted his plans and carried the spears out two at a time. There weren't _quite _enough for everyone, but they could share. The henchmen could share, that is. Drakken was The Big Cheese, and he deserved his own spear.

Drakken grinned as he stuck the spear through a marshmallow. Even if he was too chicken to do the same to Kim Possible, there was a use for these weapons after all. At the very least, they would add to the scary atmosphere he was trying to create. The buffoon would take one look at them and run off wailing for his mommy.

He poked the spear into the fire and let it toast his marshmallow to perfection. And he wondered if Shego _ever_ got tingles. Certainly nothing seemed to excite her into a frenzy, the way it did Drakken. It must have been a very mundane life without them, and Drakken hated "mundane" more than anything else on earth - with the possible exception of hangnails. No wonder Shego wanted to fight everybody.

The dreariness of that hung over the room like a 9:00 curfew. . . or a storm cloud or something. Drakken shivered under it. He did eerie clouds, not dismal ones.

Neither was necessary two long minutes later when Drakken was biting into his very own s'more. And the marshmallow mushed and the chocolate oozed and the graham cracker crunched and ohhhhhhhhh, it was utterly delicious! He let out a loud, appreciative moan.

The only thing that could have made it any better was a good movie. . .

There was that light bulb again! Some days it was great to be a supergenius.

Oh, who he was kidding? It was always great to be a supergenius!

As his henchmen lined up to grab their marshmallows, Drakken scooted over to his video collection and pawed through the cases. He'd nixed _Bambi _due to the sadness factor and _Mary Poppins _because of the strict-dad plot when his hand bumped against _Robin Hood_. The animated version, the one with the foxes.

In it went. The entire credits played at the beginning, which was aggravating, but they did a good enough job of introducing all the characters and what kinds of animals they were to keep it bearable. Surrounded by his henchmen, Drakken watched and laughed and snorted and laughed some more and ate s'mores until marshmallows were about to come out of his ears. Well, not really. The human digestive tract would never link to the ear canal, no matter how full it got. Still, it _felt _that way.

As soon as the Disney logos had faded from the screen, Drakken fell back onto the couch and rubbed his tummy, content to the max. Boy, some cocoa moo would taste fabulous right about now, though he wasn't sure he could fit it in. The room was like a sauna and the fire was popping and the last of the crickets were warming up to chirp outside. . .

Drakken could feel himself drowsing, and he saw that the henchmen were yawning, too. But if they fell asleep with a fire going, it might blaze out of control and burn down the lair, taking them and the Doom-Vee with it! A responsible employer didn't let _that _happen, either.

With great effort, Drakken pushed himself, fully, to his feet. "Adam, put out the fire," he instructed. Sleepiness had stolen his exclamation points. "The rest of you, back to your chambers."

The henchmen drooped a little in disappointment, but they didn't utter a single complaint about the few crowded rooms they had to sleep in. Times like this, Drakken remembered why he kept them around.

Only once they had shuffled off to bed did Drakken glance down at the s'more he'd hidden beside him for the duration of the movie. The one he'd been saving for Shego, in case she'd changed her mind and decided to come in after all. Women did that a lot, and it was best for a man not to be caught unprepared. He'd roasted the marshmallow golden brown, because Shego had said she hated raw ones _or _charred ones, lined it on either side with a Hershey's, and tucked the whole thing between two graham crackers without a chip on them.

But it was obvious Shego wasn't going to be showing up now. Drakken sighed and picked up the plate. He'd save it in the refrigerator overnight and give it to her in the morning. And she'd be so pleased with him! There was something soft and mushy in his chest, as if a marshmallow had migrated there.

_Warning! Warning! Warning! _flashed through Drakken's brain as he covered the plate with foil and Sharpied "THIS IS FOR SHEGO KEEP YOUR GRUBBY HANDS OFF!" across it. Wasn't "marshmallow" the exact word Jack Hench used when he was warning villains not to let themselves tenderize? Or was it tenderfy? Either one brought to mind a steak that hadn't been left on the grill long enough.

Drakken momentarily considered whether anyone ate marshmallows with steak. And then he shook his head until the rubber band slid partway down his ponytail.

It was one thing to take a holiday off. A true villain, however, had to be vigilant in his planning, or some other bozo might swoop in and take over the world when your attention was elsewhere. And that would never do.

_That _tingle ached on Drakken's tongue like hunger. The marshmallow in his chest burst into flame. That burn was all too familiar. There would be no escaping it, nor the mocking, nor the blank stare he received from would-be hostages when he told them his name - as if they were asking "Who?" - not until he rose above it all as the mightiest man on the planet.

Drakken leaned against the refrigerator door to shut it while another sigh, even deeper than the first, rolled out. He understood why things couldn't be cozy and friendly all the time. But, just for a nanosecond, he wished they could be.

Because it was eerie in here and, just for a nanosecond, eerie wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

_STATE DRIVER IDENTIFICATION_

_Possible, Kimberly_

_Height:_

_5 feet 3 inches_

_Weight:_

_112 pounds_

_Green eyes_

_Restrictions:_

_None_

_ORGAN DONOR_

"Spankin'," Kim Possible whispered to herself. She gave the skinny piece of plastic in her hand one last study before sliding it into her purse.

The photo wasn't as bad as the license-pic horror stories got you to expect. The dull gray DMV walls washed out Kim's skin but made the red in her hair really pop out, like fall leaves against a cloudy sky.

And, actually, Kim wouldn't have cared if she'd looked like Professor Dementor. Because - hello? - major key to adulthood in her possession? It was a bungee-jump rush.

Kim elbowed the front door open and started across the parking lot to where Dad sat in the Possible family's stodgy old red car. _Not_ exactly the type of thing Kim had pictured herself driving. "Mature" didn't have to mean "middle-aged," did it?

Dad was waiting like her valet - except that none of the upper-crust servants Kim had met would ever chew their fingernails like that. She was surprised Dad even HAD any left to gnaw, the way he'd nibbled on them all through her sixty required hours of supervised driving. It was funny - Dad had stared down Drakken and Killigan without so much as a swallow of fear, and facing the Bebes had only driven him further into problem-solving mode. But put Kim behind the wheel. . .

Kim hurried toward him. She didn't even have to break the news. She knew it shone through her smile.

Sure enough, Dad stopped in mid-lean with his finger on the unlock button, and his face lit up. Kim couldn't resist nudging him in the ribs as she slid practically across his lap into the driver's seat. "Move over and make room for Middleton's newest driver," she laughed.

Dad obligingly slid into the passenger seat, and then he reached over and wrapped her into a hug. Kim fought off the urge to sneak a glance back at the parking lot. It was sweet - but what if somebody from _school _saw this?

"I knew you could do it, Kimmy-cub," Dad said. He rested his chin on the top of Kim's head. "I couldn't be more proud."

The breath he blew against her hair was shaky. Good grief - he wasn't going to CRY, was he?

Kim squirmed in the arms that no longer seemed so strong and bearlike. Dad wasn't a rock-cold man like Mr. Barkin, but he wasn't a Drakken who hyperventilated emotions at the drop of a hat, either. Dealing with them when they did show up was going to be like defusing one of Duff's exploding golf balls. Nothing she couldn't handle, but _fierce _with potential mess-ups.

When Dad, mercifully, released her, he left behind a sliver of sympathy for him. She had to at least TRY to cheer him up, and not just to shush her Kimness. "Hey, think of it like this: now you won't have to keep carting me all over town." Kim grinned at her father and waited for him to grin back.

He didn't. His eyes were glassy and staring so far back into the past, Kim knew it was a toddler version of her he was seeing.

Snap. He'd actually _liked _doing that?

Kim wove her fingers around her father's sleeve. "Look, it's just a driver's license. It's not like I'm going to elope, Daddy." She said the last word deliberately, and she put as much cheerleader-perk into it as she could without going into a routine right there in the parking lot.

"Don't even _joke_ about that," Dad squeezed out. But he chuckled, that husky chuckle Kim had been hoping for. "I just can't believe my little Kimmy's getting to be so independent," he murmured.

The hairs on the back of Kim's neck stirred. Blurting "Da-ad! I'm sixteen!" would have been SUCH a sophomore stunt. But this was victory, as much as the moment when the villain realized he had been beaten and Kim got to release the smile she'd been suppressing. And she didn't want Dad spoiling it with any of his Daddy-nostalgia.

Ew. Did she sound like a sucky daughter or what?

"Well, at least you won't have to ride around with that Mankey boy anymore."

Kim rolled her eyes. "Dad, I got a ride from Josh _once_. And I had to sit in the backseat with his eight-year-old brother because his grandmother was in the front. Not exactly a recipe for romance." She didn't add that Josh-encounters had been WAY too rare for Kim's taste ever since the start of the school year. She was still trying to figure that one out herself.

Dad's chiseled-to-a-point jaw flexed. To the rest of the world, he would appear stoic, but Kim could see his Adam's apple jerking. "Romance" wasn't the best word to even _say_ to him.

A knock on the driver's window snapped both their heads toward Ron's cheeks pressed against the glass. One arm rested above his head like an awning. The other dejectedly dangled its lanky length down his side. The giant "E" on the school nurse's eye chart couldn't have been any clearer than that pose.

He hadn't passed.

Kim rolled down her window, heart already sinking. She'd really been counting on the two of them being able to celebrate together. And Ron had been _so _incredibly pumped about getting his license. Something about "ladies digging a guy who can drive."

"What did you hit?" Kim groaned. _Please, don't let it have been somebody's cat._

Ron gave her the shamefaced variation on his smile. "Just the curb."

That was an improvement. Last time it had been a mailbox.

"And the instructor said it was concerning that I looked at Rufus whenever I didn't know what to do."

Rufus punctuated that with an indignant squeal, and Ron rubbed the top of his pet's head. "Sorry, buddy," he said. "He just doesn't know how smart you are."

Kim opened her door and pulled herself from the car. Anyone could tell you that having a license when your absolute best friend didn't got to be mega awk-weird if it went on for too long. "Ron, I'm so sorry," she said. "I thought you had it nailed. Nailed to the _wall_."

If Ron could tell that she'd made the slang up on the spot, he didn't care enough to comment. "I thought I did, too," he said, with a sigh that he must have been storing in his chest for five minutes now. "Man, I really am gonna be like ol' What's-His-Face, doomed to take the city bus forever!"

His worry slammed a door somewhere in Kim. "Ron, _lots _of people fail their first driver's test and then come back to ace their second. Or third. It's not one-and-done, so stop whining." She poked her finger teasingly into his ribs. "You've still got your awesome scooter."

Ron's smile cranked up a few notches at the mention of his two-mile-an-hour piece of junk. "Yeah, there's always that. Wouldn't make a good getaway car, but as long as you've got - "

He stopped so abruptly the last few syllables ran into each other. "Kim!" Ron's freckles sprang to life. "What about you? Did - did you pass?"

Kim could only nod. Dad, by contrast, pulled the front of his shirt out from his skin the way he did when he was about to brag on somebody. "Indeed she did," he reported. All that fatherly pride in his voice made Kim wish Mr. Stoppable were here to balance it out some.

_Thanks, Dad. Not actually helping._

"Oh." Ron seemed to grow small before her eyes.

"Uh, yeah. And now I'm embarrassed for passing, and you're embarrassed for _not _passing!" Kim shook her head, flipping through the cheer-up options like the pages of _Cool_ _Teenz_ magazine.

Luckily, Ron's mood was generally pretty easy to lift. When Kim finally said, "You know what? How about we not waste time being embarrassed?" he was all over that.

"Yeah, we gotta celebrate!" He put a hand on Kim's arm that Dad removed with a dirty look. "Celebrate you, I mean. Bueno Nacho is calling your name, Kim! Can you hear it?"

"Kiiiiiiiiiiiim Possssssssssibllllle." Kim hadn't known Rufus could draw out his little mole-rat squeal like that. It was so cutely ridiculous, Kim forgot how utterly smack-worthy the two of them could be sometimes.

"Resistance is futile," Ron continued in his best imitation of one of Wade's miniature robots. "You will come with us." His brown eyes flicked up to Dad's face. "Uh, if that's okay with you, Mr. Dr. P."

Dad nodded - tensely. The older they got, Kim had noticed, the less happy Dad was about her hanging with Ron so much. She understood the whole overprotective-father thing, but come _on_. If there was any guy who couldn't be classified as a boyfriend-threat, it was Ron.

"Be home before dark," Dad said. And he fixed Ron with a stare just a little longer than it should have been. Kim had a whole "it's-not-a-boy-it's-Ron" reminder prepared before it hit her that might have been exactly what Ron DIDN'T need to hear right now.

Since Dad's effort to somehow fit into her growing up was written in strained lines down his face, Kim leaned over and pecked his cheek. "I will, Dad," she promised. "Love you."

It was the most public setting she'd said that in since she'd started kindergarten. Kim was sure Dad was sniffing up tears when they left.

They walked across the parking lot to Ron's scooter, kicking up some early leaves that crackled like Dad's laugh. Kim made a note to ask him for help with her algebra homework tonight. He _was_ only about the smartest person she knew - maybe even smarter than Justine Flanner. And he should get to see that Kim still needed him.

Ron buckled the chinstrap of his helmet and hunkered down on his scooter like it was a Harley. "Prepare to burn rubber," he said, trying to rumble the sentence like a throttle itself.

Kim didn't point out that Ron's scooter couldn't have "burned rubber" if you'd struck a match on one of its tires. She just dug her own helmet out of the trunk where Ron kept it, clicked it on, and pretended to have to hold on to Ron for dear life.

She really didn't mind that part so much. Ron had a funny, rubbery feel to him, not exactly soft but pliant, as if his thin muscles stretched and sprang back easier than most people's. It always made Kim's day to grab him and grin to herself.

When they reached Bueno Nacho, Ron swung off the scooter with a flailing of limbs and held the handlebars so Kim could get off, too. Both helmets came off. Ron's always-messy tousle of hair stood up in Tweeb-spikes.

Kim groaned as she batted a few wayward strands of red away from her face. "My hair is totally messed up, isn't it?"

Ron squinted at her. "Welllllllll, no. Not _totally_. Just a little - ya know, maybe half. Half messed up and half fine?"

Great. The boy was nothing if not honest.

Bueno Nacho was, as always, comfortably warm inside, filled with the greasy-taco-place smell they kept dialed down a few degrees below gag-me levels and the chattering of the after-school crowd. Kim spied a blurred-together knot of purple-and-orange Mad Dog cheerleader uniforms and felt the helmet-head sitch grow more disastrous by the second. Bonnie was the only one likely to say something to her FACE, but there would have been giggles, even good-natured ones, and that bothered Kim more than she cared to admit. It just seemed so vain and shallow and so - so _Bonnie_ to get your cargoes in a twist over something that could be fixed with a mirror and a hairbrush.

"Be right back," she told Ron and booked it for the ladies' room.

Arrgh. It was just what she'd been afraid of. Kim watched her own eyes roll as they took in what used to be her 'do. It had frazzled out to both sides of her head, hunks blown every which way across her part by the newly-fall wind.

She had just gotten her hairbrush out her backpack when she heard footsteps approaching from down the hall. Kim's fingers tightened on the bubblegum-colored handle. Girls would say things in the bathroom that they wouldn't have DREAMED of saying anywhere else.

Kim exploded into motion. She was across the floor and locked in a stall before the bathroom door even squawked open. _Those martial arts move come in handy even when I'm NOT being chased by some evil freak_, Kim thought.

Through the narrow gap at the bottom of the stall, Kim could pick out two pairs of white tennis shoes. One was the same good-enough bargain brand Dad had insisted on buying for Kim. The other was spotless, so expensive that smudges probably wouldn't dare to show up on them. They could have only belonged to one person.

_Okay, I take back what I said about no evil freaks._

Bonnie was actually a hundred times worse than any of the villains Kim had ever faced. The worst they could do was kill you. Only Shego had mastered the art of humiliating mind games the way Bonnie had, and at least Kim was _allowed_ to kick Shego in the stomach. With Bonnie, she was a head cheerleader without her pom-poms, a crimefighter without her grappling hook. Her one defense was her mouth, and it didn't always come through with a sassy retort - not calmly, at least.

"Can you _believe _Possible got her driver's license before me?" The voice stung like a long-nailed slap. Yep. Bonnie.

"Why not? Kim's a good driver. I mean, not that you're not good, too, Bonnie. You're both good drivers."

That had to be Tara. No one else would make that much of an effort not to hurt Bonnie's feelings.

If Bonnie _had_ any.

"Uh, hello? Because she totally freaked out in Driver's Ed last year? And I thought she'd want to wait until _Stoppable _got his." The might-as-well-have-been-a-spit on Ron's name was so common it shouldn't have wound its way down Kim's backbone like it did. "And that's obviously not happening any time soon."

_Somebody please hold me back._

Kim could imagine Bonnie's eyebrows crawling down in that snakelike way that fit her so well. "I could drive rings around Kim any day," she sniffed.

Frazzled hair or not, Kim would have leaped from the stall and smacked Bonnie's lip gloss off - if there hadn't been cracks in Bonnie's usually smooth words. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself of something, and Bonnie Rockwaller had never needed convincing that she was better than everyone else.

"Then what's the prob?" Tara's voice was kind, gentle. She was _way_ more patient than Kim could have ever been.

"The prob is getting in sixty hours with a licensed driver!" There was a silky flap as Bonnie shook her head. "You know my dad's never around. My mom treats me like a three-year-old. And my sisters - well, that's just not even an option."

Bonnie's 'tude broke and pulled itself back together before Kim could glimpse what hid behind it. Suddenly Dad gnawing off his fingernails as he rode shotgun seemed like _complete _support.

She'd never really taken the time to think about Bonnie's home life. All Kim knew about the Rockwaller clan was that Bonnie's mom embarrassed her - because that was what mothers did - and her sisters had won the talent show every year they were at Middleton High, which Bonnie never let anyone forget. Picturing a house full of snotty, perfect people pressed Kim's legs against the cold porcelain she was perched on. At least this thing had a _lid_.

"What about Brick?" Tara suggested. "Doesn't he have a license yet?"

"No. He totally knows how to work a car, but he's never managed to pass the written test. That's hard for him." Bonnie parted with one of her it's-tough-being-the-only-person-in-the-world-who-isn't-lame sighs.

Kim's sympathies immediately shifted to Brick. That had to stink, having your own girlfriend think you were a moron. Brick was SO not what Kim would have called a prize catch, but he deserved way better than Bonnie. Everyone did.

_Even Bonnie._

The thought was gone before Kim could figure out where it had strolled in from. "I'll get those hours if I have to kidnap one of the seniors," Bonnie hissed. "There is NO way I'm letting that loser Stoppable beat me to a license!"

"I don't think Ron's a loser," Tara mumbled. It was all Kim could do not to jump out and hug her.

"Tara, you're way too nice!"

Yeah. Bonnie _would_ consider that the worst insult ever.

Tara's sneakers squeaked on the tile. Bonnie's only left behind dignified shushings as the door slid open and slapped shut again.

Kim unlocked the stall and walked up to the mirror, still white-knuckling the brush. She felt weighed down now, as if another person's burdens had been dumped on top of the responsibility she already had to the entire world. Kim hadn't felt that way since Drakken had bawled over his college days.

Of course most of the villains were miserable, or they probably wouldn't have been trying to take over the world in the first place. Some were just better at hiding it than others.

And Bonnie guarded the person inside herself as if she were ashamed of it. That was why the idea of evil older Rockwallers didn't really surprise Kim. The girl was such an expert at manipulation, she had to have been taught it from Day One.

Kim could have sworn she saw bags forming beneath her reflection's eyes. This stuff was WAY too heavy for a celebration dinner. For Pete's sake, Wade had already beeped her this morning about changing her locker combination because somebody had broken in yesterday.

According to Wade, the would-be thief had taken one glance at Drakken's and Shego's wanted posters and hightailed it out of there. Whether it was due to Shego's capable-of-cutting-through-stone face or the knowledge that this locker belonged to the girl who had been responsible for putting these villains away - or even Drakken's mug-shot scowl that could be scary if you didn't know him - was anybody's guess.

Wade was pretty sure it was just some dork looking to rip off someone's cell. Kim wouldn't have been surprised if it had been Bonnie herself, searching for Kim's permit info. That would have been right up her sick little alley.

Kim shook her head at herself as she guided the brush through the last of the snarls in her hair, leaving it lying deflated but de-frizzed on her shoulders. She should get back out to Ron and tell him about the miniature beards sprouting from her driving instructor's ears so she could hear him guffaw - a sound like a burst of fresh air. It was the best trick for getting rid of a Bonnie aftertaste.

Kim was so used to scanning a place for enemies that she found the cheerleaders as soon as she stepped out of the bathroom, gathered in clumps around a booth the whole room's length away from Team Possible's usual spot by the front windows. She was so busy sighing with relief as she eased into her seat across from Ron that it took her a minute to realize a mild bean burrito with a side salad and a grape soda were parked at her place, as if they'd just been waiting for her.

Her fav.

Ron grinned at her - that closed-lipped grin he'd been working on recently. It was enough to banish all the Bonnie thoughts except one.

Kim leaned forward and rested her hand on Ron's thick one that always looked three sizes too huge for his knobby wrists. "You're gonna ace that test this weekend," she said. "You are SO getting your license before Bonnie."

Ron glowed, all the way up to his bangs. "Really?" he squawked - loud enough for the lady with the hearing aid behind them to catch. "Bon-Bon doesn't have a license yet?"

"Keep your _voice _down!" Kim didn't have the about-to-be-attacked stiffening, but she glanced over her shoulder anyway to confirm Bonnie wasn't coming after them with a spare stiletto heel even now. "She doesn't have enough drive time yet," she whispered. "She's pretty tweaked and, actually, I don't blame her."

Ron's eyes popped like a dog toy's, but the bulge lessened as he slowly began to nod. "Family problems?" he asked.

Kim nodded back, surprised. Ron being that perceptive had to mean -

_He can relate to it._

Well, _doy _he could relate to it. Ron had had mega-trouble getting those driving hours himself. Ron's dad could calculate anything except the time he WASN'T spending with his son. And Mrs. Stoppable - she was usually halfway in some other world whenever Kim saw her. Even though they weren't _mean _parents, you couldn't really count on them, either.

So Kim had volunteered _her _family. With Dad's robots that he brought home from work and the frumpy dresses Nana was always knitting for her, with Mom keeping tabs on everyone's brain activity and the Tweebs taking brattiness to super-genius levels, it sometimes felt like Kim had enough family for two or three people. And they all loved Ron - even Dad. Mom thought he was "the sweetest young man," and the Tweebs worshiped him as the big brother they'd never had.

"It can't be this weekend, though," Ron butted in, cheeks stuffed. "Cousin Reuben's bringing his fiancee home to meet the extended fam."

The grade soda Kim had taken a sip of nearly launched from her mouth. "Just _now_? The wedding's in, what, less than two months?"

"Guess he wanted to wait until she couldn't back out." One of Ron's shoulders lifted slightly higher than the other in a shrug as awkward as everything else about him.

Kim grunted her understanding. The Stoppable clan wasn't exactly what you'd call close-knit. _Must be sad when the naked mole rat is the most supportive member of your family._

"Hey, you know what would hurricane-rock, Kim?"

Kim felt the corners of her lips twitching. "Uh, no. What?"

"Picture this: I get my license. And then the next day I wake up and come downstairs and there's this brand-new Mustang in the driveway. And I say, 'Whose is that?' and my parents say, 'It's yours,' and I say, 'Why didn't you tell me you were gonna buy me a car?' And they say, 'This is our way of telling you.'"

Ron pounded his fist on the table, narrowly missing Rufus, who was rolling around on its surface, holding his little sides. Ned gave them a curious glance, and Kim waved at him. She could almost hear him thinking, _It never quits around here._

_No, it doesn't,_ she answered him mentally. _And I would be enormously bummed if it did._

"Okay, I'll bite." Kim stabbed a lettuce leaf with her fork. "Why a Mustang?"

Ron leaned back against the padded top of the booth, self-satisfaction working its way across his face. "To prove I'm not afraid of mechanical horses anymore."

Kim went ahead and laughed.

"Well, whatever happens," Ron said around a mouthful of naco, "it can't be any weirder than when I got my permit ID."

Part of Kim wanted to roll her eyes. _ONLY heard it about twenty-five times. _

Still, this was one of Ron's funnier stories, and she slanted forward to help him tell it. "They asked you if you wanted to be an organ donor," Kim began.

"I _thought _they meant pipe organs!" The defensiveness cracked a voice that puberty was already playing havoc with.

"So you said, 'My family doesn't have any.'" She'd wanted to disappear just a _tiny bit_.

"And the lady there gave me a really funny look," Ron added.

"Funny?" Kim cocked a brow. "I thought she was going to cut you open right there!"

"Ew!" Ron shuddered inside the red sweater he'd been wearing for at least two days straight. "Didn't need that brain pic, KP!"

Kim _did_ roll her eyes at that point. "Right, like I love to imagine my best friend getting dissected." The frogs in freshman biology had been bad enough.

"So it can't be any worse when I get my license," Ron said. He went as ghostly-white as the sheets in Mom's operating room. "_If _I get my license. _If _I don't become that deadbeat dude who's gotta have his friends drive him everywhere!"

Actually, right now, Kim wasn't positive Ron _should _get his license. He'd changed lanes without signaling so many times in this conversation alone, her head would have been spinning if it hadn't spent the past twelve years tracking his thoughts. "Not everyone who doesn't have a license ends up like Drakken," she said.

Ron's neck jerked back and almost wobbled. "Drakken? Drakken doesn't have a license?!"

Kim could have kicked herself. As it was, she squirmed on the hard-packed seat - seriously, had no one ever thought of PADDING those things? "That's what I heard him say when the police were taking him and Motor Ed away," she admitted. "Why he thought that would get him in LESS trouble, I have no idea - "

Ron interrupted her with a flood of panic. "So I'm not just gonna be a loser? I'm gonna be a _supervillain_, too?"

Oh, bro-_ther_. Kim planted her palms on the table and tilted forward, making sure her gaze was crimefighter-stern on Ron. "Drakken did not turn evil because he doesn't have a driver's license," she said in the most no-nonsense voice she could drum up. "He turned evil because his friends picked on him in college."

It was easier to say "his friends" than "my dad." Dad was the kind of guy Kim would have described with words like "gentle" and "patient," and he'd sounded genuinely sorry when he'd told her about all the drama with the first Bebes. But whenever he got anywhere near Drakken, what Kim saw her in own father was just as disturbing as what she saw in Drakken himself.

She would have thought that learning your friend had gone out and become a megalomaniac would have given you a heck of a lot more guilt than just him dropping out -

It seemed like kind of a pathetic reason - but then, Drakken was kind of a pathetic person. As in, Kim genuinely felt sorry for him most of the time.

"Ya know what?" Ron gulped his last bite and hit his chest, his "polite" method for holding back a belch. "I bet things woulda been really different for Drakken if he'd had a friend like you."

Kim felt sunrise on her face. "Stop it, Ron. You're going to make me cry." She said it playfully, but the eyes she rolled might really have misted over a little.

_Yeah. I've got it pretty good._

Especially compared to people like poor old Drakken. Or Bonnie. Even though Bonnie was probably going to get the car of her dreams the moment she'd earned her license and probably a vanity plate that said 2COOL4U, Kim could still hear the moment Bonnie's lip-curl had failed her in the bathroom.

_So, decision. If - WHEN - Ron gets his license first, I'm not gonna rub it in Bonnie's face._ _I'll just let her find out for herself. Can't promise I won't relish it when she does, but. . . _

But there you had it. The feud with Bonnie had been going on since BEFORE middle school, and it was one of the things Kim would be glad to get away from when she graduated.

The weight Kim hadn't been feeling since exiting the bathroom pressed on her again. _One_ of them had to grow up eventually, and it definitely wasn't going to be Bonnie.

Besides, who had the next step to adulthood stashed away in her purse?

Kim stuck her hand into the side pocket and felt the slender card again. There was even more she could do now. Jump on a plane, go save the world, and then drive herself home from the airport? Pretty glam gig for a junior.

Bonnie didn't even get to eat dinner with a sworn-true friend or have a father care enough to overprotect her. That could take the heat right out of Kim's hate.

_So. Maturity works. Spankin'. _

And as soon as Ron dropped her off, Kim was going to give her dad the hug he deserved.


	15. This September

**~I'm baaacck (from getting my wisdom teeth out)! Did ya miss me? ;) Let's see what's on the docket today. . . ~**

**Her**

Kim Possible was looking for something to wear. Something cool, but not slavishly trendy. Something that would show all the experience she'd had with this school, without looking like she was trying to take Mr. Barkin's place running everything.

There had been no 12:00 AM missions the night before, so Kim had bounded out of bed as soon as her alarm went off at six this morning, "raring to go" as Dad would say. She was SO ready for senior year.

Kim pushed the row of shirts and skirts in half and combed through it. Her thoughts bubbled with the senior table, bathed in that golden-stage-light glow, which probably wouldn't seem that cheesy anymore. Not to mention the new varsity uniforms the cheerleaders were getting - purple and dignified white, edged in gold. Those were going to give Bonnie _such _a head rush, but for the moment all Kim could imagine was how grown-up they'd look standing side by side, like those cheerleaders at college games.

Was that Bonnie's big dream? To be a professional cheerleader? If it was, she had "another thing coming" - also a Dad-ism. Cheerleaders may have been top of the food chain at Middleton High, but they weren't ranked very high out in the real world. Kim shook her head at the thought and at the green crop top her grip had just landed on. Nah. Everybody had seen that _way _too many times.

And college was on the horizon, close enough to be a lot more than a speck. Kim was already salivating at the idea of criminal justice classes. She didn't want to force people to _pay _her for saving their lives, not like those jerks Team Impossible, but going pro and getting _some _kind of cash for it had serious possibilities. Her GPA rounded up to a 4.0, her expected ACT score was 34, and college brochures had already started arriving in the mail. Dad's eyes misted over each one.

Okay, that mostly-white shirt was calling Kim's name. New enough. In enough. Unique enough. And the little pink heart on it would serve as a great reminder - that she was a crimefighter, NOT a mercenary or whatever the heck Shego had been. _She _had a heart.

Kim held up the matching-pink capris to see if they'd still fit on her newly acquired hips and grinned to herself. It was a fashion risk that worked. Bonnie always said redheads didn't look good in pink. But Monique had told Kim her hair was auburn enough to pull it off, and Kim would have taken her fashion advice over Bonnie's any day.

Makeup came next, and Kim completed the outfit with her favorite purple button earrings, the ones she didn't usually wear to school. She liked what she saw in the mirror: shoulders squared, gaze clear and direct, lips ready for whatever happened next.

Yeah. She was looking like a senior.

As soon as Kim climbed down the steps from her attic bedroom, Mom let out a squeal - not a sound she broke into often. "Oh, Kimmy, you look so beautiful!" Mom cried, running to Kim's side. "_Love _the outfit."

Dad gave a lump-in-the-throat swallow. It was like he couldn't talk, not even to bug Kim about the belly button showing. He just nudged Mom toward the sleek new digital camera sitting in the center of the table.

Mom handled it as effortlessly as she performed surgery. She snapped Kim from every angle, in about seventeen different poses. Kim didn't even need to force a smile the way she usually did after the first three. She couldn't blame Mom for going overboard with the pics. After all, this was her last REAL first day of school.

That was a freeing thought.

Kinda sad, but freeing. There was a whole year to get sentimental, after all. Today was about beginnings.

Still, Kim found herself squeezing her 'rents extra tight when she gave out her see-you-this-evening hugs. She was going to miss them when that year was up.

"Here are the keys," Mom said, pressing a set into Kim's hand as she pulled away. "Lose them, and you'll never drive again."

She gave Kim half an impish smile. Dad didn't. "As long as you're not riding around with some boy," he said.

Kim fought the urge to toss her just-brushed hair. "Dad, my days of 'some boy' are _so _over," she said. "There's just Ron now. And you KNOW you can trust him."

Dad nodded vaguely. Kim could read _But that was when he wasn't your boyfriend_ printed on his drawn-tight cheeks.

The Tweebs, of course, had to get in on the action then. Bumping each other with their stuffed-to-the-max backpacks, they jeered, "Kim and Ron, sitting in a tree -"

Yeesh. You'd think the child geniuses would have been able to come up with something more original. Then again, that might have been worse. Jim and Tim were _completely _unbearable when they got creative. Kim had hoped their summer growth spurts had added a few inches to their maturity, too. Apparently not. She got the feeling she would miss them, too, but she couldn't have listed a single reason why.

Kim stepped around them, not even bothering to tread on the heel of Jim's sneaker in that way he hated. She wasn't going to let herself get riled, not when she actually had wheels. Even if they _were_ Mom's, at least Mom and Dad were cool enough parents to know that a girl had to drive herSELF to senior year. Though Dad was probably going to launch a probe over Middleton High to keep watch on the entire day.

The rumbling of the engine thrilled Kim like the beep of the Kimmunicator. Less than two years ago, she'd been scared to death to get behind the wheel of one of these things. Now she was backing out of the driveway cautiously, craning her neck to see around the too-tall trash cans, and not even nervous about it.

Adulthood was _full _of potential. And Kim was prepped for every bit of it as she drove toward school. The roads were pretty much patched up by now. The few remaining cracks and potholes only shook free in Kim that she and Ron - and Rufus and Wade - could do anything together.

She didn't like to brag, but - her life was just about perfect.

Kim pulled into the Middleton High parking lot seven minutes later, switched off the ignition, and made her way across the bustling lawn. She got "Hi, Kim"s from several football players, a few of Josh Mankey's old artsy friends, and both the candidates for class president - a position Kim WASN'T running for this time, because she'd spread herself _way_ too thin in the past couple years.

And then, of course, there was Ron, eyes sleepy but bright - especially once he spotted her. He waved with so much enthusiasm Kim was afraid he would launch himself straight off the ground. "Boo-_yah_!" Ron cried. "Welcome to Senior Paradise, Kim!"

Ron held out a fist for Kim to knuckle-bump, which she did. His smile was smeared from one honkin' ear to the other, a sloppy thing that screamed, I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND FOR SENIOR YEAR!

Kim got the same warm fuzzies she always got when she saw that smile. "Senior Paradise?" she said. "Are you turning this into some kind of resort now?"

She wouldn't have put it past him, but Ron shook his head. "Nah. Don't need to. This is everything we've been working toward for three long years!" He pumped one arm in the air as he opened the front doors and ushered her grandly inside. "And it's all gonna be worth it. We're VIPs now!"

Kim wasn't sure which one of them reached for the other first, but somehow they wound up wrapped into a hug. Ron's narrow shoulder made the perfect dip for her to rest her head in. From this close up, Kim could see a sandy-pale shadow of whiskers on his upper lip. She had no clue why that surprised her. The kid _was _seventeen now.

The room didn't go still as if everyone had stopped breathing, so Kim let her eyes roam around it. A bunch of the cheerleaders were muffling friendly smiles with their hands. Two girls who always had their noses in books pressed their hands to their chests and exchanged isn't-that-sweet glances. A scrawny boy who had to be a freshman gave Ron a look of envy.

Bonnie was the only one scowling. She stood a little apart from the rest of the cheerleaders in what was probably supposed to be Queen-Bee superiority. It was stretched thinner than Kim's sophomore schedule.

"Hi, Bonnie," Kim said - politely - as she untangled herself from Ron's arms. He still had a little trouble handling them sometimes so that they didn't flop everywhere. "Happy first day."

Bonnie adjusted her spaghetti straps. "So. You two are still a thing?" She was getting that predatory look between her eyebrows.

"Um. Yeah." Kim shrugged. "Not like it's any of your business."

"WhatEVER," Bonnie huffed. "You wanna flush your reputation down the toilet, fine with me. Just don't take ours with it."

Her words were firing at Kim like bullets but hitting like blanks. They seemed small and pathetic after everything that had gone down back in April.

"Don't see how I could," Kim replied, leaning her head back against Ron's collarbone. "Not with a guy this neat. Besides, don't you still have Brick on a leash?"

"Where _is _Brick, anyway?" Ron asked. "He's gonna miss all the senior fun!"

_Maybe poor old Brick finally wised up and decided to lose the witch._

Bonnie's forehead pinched. "At college. Do neither of you remember he GRADUATED this spring?"

Kim blinked. She'd just kind of _expected _Brick would have been a senior again this year. He'd been one almost as long as she'd known him. "Well," she finally said. "All right, Brick. Good for him."

Bonnie squinted at Kim as if she were searching for sarcasm. The slashes of Crayola-aqua held about two dozen nonverbal putdowns, most of which were directed at Ron.

Kim was about to send some pretty clear unspoken messages back when Monique floated into the room. The deep maroon dress she wore made her fudgy skin glow like polished wood, and jewels that looked just like the real thing dipped from her lobes to dust the velvety-clad shoulders.

"You look fabulous," Kim said, super-happy to turn the conversation to Monique's outfit.

"So do you, girl." Monique held Kim out to examine her at arm's length. "You oughta wear earrings more often."

Kim fingered the purple buttons. "That's kind of a big no in my line of work."

"Right. Forgot," Monique said, dimpling. "And how are _you _doing, Bonnie?"

Bonnie's jaw worked. Kim could see her searching for something about Monique to insult and finding nothing. It had to be killing her.

Come to think of it, Bonnie looked pretty stunning herself. If only she would smile, and not that I'm-about-to-claw-off-your-fingernails smirk.

"I'm fine," Bonnie said, tossing the brown hair she'd obviously had flipped up for the occasion. "But Middleton High just lost their star quarterback, and it's not like we have a lot of guys who can replace him." Her eyes glittered over Ron again.

_Don't smack her!_

It got much easier when Monique tilted herself between the two of them and said, "Shhhh, Bonnie, do you hear that? That's the sound of everyone not caring."

Ron burst out in a howl.

Kim clapped a hand over her mouth to keep back her own laughter. "We better get to our lockers if we want to get to class early."

"Why would we want to do that?" Ron asked. Rufus poked his head out of Ron's baggy pocket and squeaked out a question mark of his own.

"Brownie points with Barkin," Kim explained.

"Ah." Ron's eyes lit up as the dots connected. "Yeah, that couldn't hurt." He flopped his hand in a klutz-wave at Monique and Bonnie, adding, "See ya, ladies."

Monique acknowledged him with a nod. Bonnie was too busy winding up to near-hysterics, which Monique was talking down with, "The Mad Dogs are gonna be fine," set on repeat. She didn't interact with Bonnie much, and Kim's rescuing instincts hoped to keep it that way.

Sure enough, Monique only walked a couple more steps with Bonnie before breaking free and taking the extra-long route around to the banks of lockers. A huge sense of _phew!_ settled over Kim as she and Ron hustled to their own lockers, only four doors away from each other. They'd begged the principal for close ones way back in freshman orientation.

Man, they used to be such _babies _a few years ago. Ron was shorter than Kim back then, and she'd pretty tiny and flat-chested herself.

Kim smiled into the memories for a second, and she was sure she stood a little taller. These were _her _halls, the ones she'd kick-flipped down when some villain had made the mistake of tailing her back here, the ones she didn't have to scurry down frantically to get to class anymore, because she knew them like the back of her hand. In spite of the gorchy cafeteria food and absolute zero interior decorating, Middleton High was like another home to Kim.

It was one of the few things that HADN'T changed since prom season, and that was actually kinda comforting.

"So, Mad Dog," Kim said as she spun her combination. "Ready for your first practice as a _senior _dog?"

Ron didn't miss a beat. "You bet, baby!" He thumbed the brown straps of his backpack out to make up for the barely-there puff of his scrawny chest. "I put banana cream foam on my list of school supplies, and the 'rents didn't even ask questions."

"Shocking." Kim hoped it was empathy in her expression when she looked up at Ron, since she didn't one-hundred-percent know what he was going through. Mom and Dad were _way_ busy most of the time, but they always managed to squeeze out a few minutes for her.

"Yeah. Well, it's cool." Ron shrugged in that lanky, lopey way she loved so much. "Hey, do you think I'll get a new uniform, too?"

"A new sweater, maybe," Kim said. Dorky as the old Mad Dog mask was, she'd miss it if Ron ever decided to ditch the thing.

"I saw the cheerleaders' new uniforms already." Ron suddenly looked like he didn't know what to do with his hands - or his tongue or his spine. "And they'll be _beautiful_. I mean, _you'll _be beautiful in them! Well, in _it_, 'cause you're only gonna wear one - "

_Do NOT smile_, Kim commanded her face. Ron wasn't exactly the master flirt he'd always thought he was. That just cemented his sweetness, because you knew he couldn't be anything other than totally genuine.

Rufus, figuring out his owner was floundering, drew himself up to his full six-inch height to help. "Pretty girl," he said, leveling one tiny claw straight across from his nose. "Pretty clothes -" Rufus pushed another claw up against the first one, then sprang them apart in a perfect cheer-ending split - "WOW!"

This time Kim did smile, at both of them. Her boyfriend and his naked mole rat, who had taught her that not all rodents were made of _ewwwwwwww _and not all guys had to be Prince Charming.

Kim yanked open her locker and the smile froze. Big dark eyes, cradled by truly impressive runny-mascara-type circles, stared back at her.

It was the first time in weeks she'd even thought about Drakken, and it almost overturned the senior table. Even as Kim felt the disgust slink up her throat, though, she couldn't see the psycho in the picture on the wanted poster. She looked into the baggy-eyed glare she remembered so well - the eyes struggling to hold and be hard but still coming out soulful.

This was Pathetic Drakken. So-NOT-the-drama Drakken. The Drakken she'd _thought _she'd known. It was like being tapped on the shoulder by a ghost.

That was all he and Shego - whose photo hung just below Drakken's, as fox-sneaky as ever - were in Kim's life anymore: ghosts. They were in a higher security penitentiary than they'd ever been before, with more serious charges against them. So maybe it wasn't just wishful thinking that she'd seen the last of them.

It would have been just the right opportunity to tear the pictures down. After all, who wanted to look at Drakken's creepy scar and weird little nose before every class? Kim was actually reaching up to grab a corner when some kind of conviction shook her.

The poster couldn't come down. She had to keep it as a reminder of the kind of stuff she could overcome, the kinds of sickos she'd brought to justice.

It'd make a pretty spankin' dart board, too. . .

Gro-oss. How immature was that?

But the OTHER reasons stood firm. Kim needed to keep the thing around until she could meet its eyes and tell it, _I beat you. Over and over and over again, I beat you. _The taco tower stripped of evil tech, the ragged tears in the road being sealed, even her own computer now sitting silent instead of beeping with "Kim, Drakken stole XYZ" - those were all signs that her world was getting cleaner. More Drakken-free.

She grimaced at the blaze in her temples. Kim didn't want Drakken's head on a platter, though she could never forgive him for what he'd done. She just wanted not to care about him at all.

It would just add to her stress, and not that invigorating dunk-in-the-pool that kept life from being a string of homework and cheer practice. Senior year was going to be tough enough, with grueling, Barkin-taught classes and carving out a college path, not to mention Bonnie constantly riding her for breaking the cardinal rule of cheerleading - not to date a non-jock. Despite her misgivings, that was a world Kim was actually excited to enter.

And it was a world where Drakken and Shego were no longer welcome. They'd been scrubbed away like the Grade-A case of head lice they were.

_Good luck turning off THAT reaction._

For once, though, it was easier to let go of Shego than Drakken. Maybe it was because Kim wasn't used to misjudging people that badly, for that long. How could she not have caught the foaming-at-the-mouth side of _Drakken _until it was too late?

Or had it ever been there at all? Had Drakken powered up, like a character in one of those stupid video games Ron liked, overnight and THEN gone all ruthless on their behinds? Out of nowhere?

Huh. Either sitch was sickening.

Well, whatever. At this point, Drakken was no longer Kim's responsibility, except to somehow keep from spitting when she heard his name. One thing the dating game had taught her: You could never be done with someone as long as you hated their guts. And Kim was _so _done with Drakken and Shego. Her future was gleaming bright and beautiful in front of her - why wreck it with the shadow of a lost cause like Dr. Drakken?

Kim snagged her English Lit book from her locker and let the door shut with a resounding slam that she could feel all the way to her core. For a moment, all the jammed-together lockers reminded her of all the gleaming teeth crowded into Drakken's grin. But Kim blinked, readjusted her earrings, took a sip from the water fountain, and it was gone.

A gift certificate to Club Banana couldn't have made her happier.

**()()()()()**

Mr. Barkin WAS the teacher overseeing homeroom - natch - and his beady brown eyes about popped from their sockets when Kim and Ron showed up in the doorway before the bell even rang. Kim knew from experience that only complete and utter shock could startle that look onto Barkin. Seeing the boy he'd given up on before ninth grade was even over arriving _early _to the first class of senior year had to be the ultimate.

"Stoppable?" The growl that Barkin always kept so tightly disciplined gaped open now in disbelief.

"Yes, sir, Mr. B," Ron said, sheer pride all over his voice. "You are gonna see a new Ron Stoppable this year. New year, new habits." He gave his eyebrows a jiggle. "New girlfriend."

Mr. Barkin's own eyebrows peaked toward the very-high top of his forehead. He mumbled something under his breath - something about the rumors being true and him not being more surprised if the Mad Dog football team had somehow found their way to the Super Bowl. It struck Kim that his reaction could have come straight from Bonnie herself.

It didn't strike Ron, or it would have showed on his so-expressive face. Right now the only thing glowing there was the grin that did everything but give off electricity. Kim worked on arranging her own smile without letting in a hint of 'tude. It was hard _not _to be a _little_ bit smug after you'd left Steve "nothing-rattles-me" Barkin speechless.

Barkin waved his hand toward the back of the room. "All right," he said. "Go find seats and sit down. And no PDA in my class!"

Kim didn't waste an eye-roll on that. She just slid into a desk in front of Ron, took out _English Lit - Grade 12_, and half-lost herself in Dickens until the bell was ringing, a few of the eternally-stuck-in-detention boys were straggling defiantly in, and Barkin was blaring them all to life with, "Listen up, people!"

Ron shied in his seat, nearly spilling the textbook that he'd actually had open. Kim peeked back at him and shot him a thumbs'-up. He returned it with a better-than-a-kiss grin.

Yeah. He didn't even have to _touch _her for there to be PDA.

Mr. Barkin stood in front of his desk, wide shoulders set at their usual military level. The grizzly-bear voice began instructions on picking up class schedules, signing up for extracurricular activities, and remembering that they were almost adults and should be responsible for themselves now - all of which Kim absorbed eagerly.

Mom had told her just last week that senior year would be the best time of her life so far. And Kim was beyond determined to make the most of it. After all the nasties of junior year - especially the months leading up to prom - she'd better get herself some of that.

**()()()()()()**

Hot lunch was as disgusting as ever, but the coolness of the senior table made up for it. The whole golden-glow thing was missing since the stage crew hadn't assembled yet - which Kim didn't especially mind, because - let's face it - it _was_ a little cheesy. But it still rocked not having to eat at their old table. The table where she'd first met Eric.

The remains of crushing-on-a-Synthodrone pain had healed themselves to a blister that didn't hurt anymore unless you rubbed it against something. Kim wasn't going to give it the satisfaction.

In between pokes and prods of the wonder-what-it-is main course, she and Ron compared class schedules. Kim was happy to discover that they had _four _classes together, not counting cheer practice. Ron was equally glad that his gym class didn't come right after lunch anymore.

"I mean, what genius thought that up?" he asked.

Six months ago Kim would have answered with a wisecrack about the thin line between genius and insanity. Now the Drakken-places were too raw.

A curvy silhouette fell over the table, and Kim nearly choked on a cloud of pricey perfume. Probably half of the senior girls - including Monique - were wearing the same scent, but only one lathered it on like soap.

_Why do I have to keep tripping over this girl every ten minutes?_ Kim thought. _I would ALMOST rather think about Drakken._

Kim swiveled in her chair. "Hi, Bonnie," she said pleasantly - not easy to do when Bonnie's eyes were already in slits. Any second now, her upper lip would be folding over itself in that perfect way that somehow managed not to smear lipstick under her nose. Kim knew what _that _was about.

According to Bonnie - and the majority of the other cheerleaders, who either thought like Bonnie or were too afraid to disagree with her - Ron was distressingly uncool. Low as he was on the school food chain, he might as well sport Coke-bottle glasses and a pocket protector. Kim stifled a smile at the mental image. He still would have made it look adorable.

Bonnie _clearly _couldn't have agreed LESS. "This is the senior table?" she said. The lip went up, right on cue.

Kim ground her teeth together. "Uh, yeah. Just us seniors here."

The sound of sneakers squeaking on the floor accompanied the rest of the cheer squad, along with Monique, over to the table. Felix was there, too, with Zita Flores perched on the arm of his wheelchair.

_That _was new.

Bonnie was straining so hard, Kim could almost hear the individual prickles rising on her neck. The choice she'd landed right smack-dab in the middle of was as glaring as a zit: either sit with Ron or forfeit the senior table altogether.

"WHATever," Bonnie sighed again. It was the closest Bonnie would ever come to admitting defeat, and even it was followed by a sassy hair-toss. She flounced to a chair and sank down with the air of a witch whose spells had failed her for the first time, making sure to take the seat farthest away from Kim and Ron.

Like that was breaking Kim's heart any.

**()()()()()()**

But Kim should have known the girl wouldn't let the matter drop.

"Are we still going to have Mad Dog Stoppable for our mascot this year?" Bonnie asked as they were getting changed in the locker room after school. Her eyes challenged Kim's head-on as she fluffed her neckline. Preening like a peacock already.

Kim pushed her new silky top over her head and wriggled the fabric into place. "Oh, yeah," she said. "He's all stocked up on banana cream foam and everything."

_All right, so I just said the last part to watch her turn green. _

Bonnie let her mouth sag. "Oh. I was hoping we'd get someone less. . . dweeby this year."

It was funny - there was a time when Kim would have donated a kidney to get Ron to junk the Mad Dog mask and never look back. Back before Drakken -

"He's _supposed _to be goofy," Kim said - loudly, to stamp out Drakken's pleading whine in her mind. "It's the mascot's job to entertain the crowd."

"And nobody could do a better job than Ron," said a tiny, quiet voice. A voice that went so far out of its way to avoid stepping on toes that it could have only been -

Tara?

Bonnie whipped around, skirt swishing around her thighs-like-a-model's. Tara had emerged from the stall she always got changed in, without the slightest sign that she thought ANYone was lame. She smiled at Kim and Bonnie, as friendly and bubbly as ever, before ducking her face and sending her blonde waves falling forward again. And then Kim understood why Josh's quiet depth had clicked better with Tara than with her.

The rest of the cheerleaders were doing a unanimous nod. Bonnie was pulling into a major frown. There was nothing Kim needed to do except clap her hands and say, "Okay, girls. Let's get going! M-A-D - "

"D-O-G-S!" everyone else finished. That was the squad Kim loved.

She caught her breath as they filed out of the room, passing the massive sink-spanning mirror on the way. Ron was right: they _did _look gorgeous, in uniforms such a wide range of colors that everybody's skin tone was flattered somehow. In skirts just a little longer, a little more sophisticated. In gold trim that glimmered like their bright futures.

Only Bonnie's scowl messed it up, and she wasn't going to wear it for long. Professional cheerleaders didn't glower during practice.

The girls fell back into their rhythm as if they hadn't spent the whole summer apart. Their pyramid would have made any pharaoh proud, Kim thought as she raised her arms toward the ceiling, drinking in the moment. This was her spot, secure on the top.

From this high up, Kim could see right out the window to the always-green lawn. The lawn that still had bulldozers parked on it, surrounded by construction tape, more souvenirs from prom night.

Thinking about the washed-up superfreak AGAIN wasn't high on Kim's to-do list. Still, Drakken just barged on in where he didn't belong, the way he _always _did.

_He attacked us. He attacked the whole world - but we were first. Because of me._

Kim was surprised by the heat wave in her stomach. If anybody had asked her, she wouldn't have said any city on earth was any more important than any other. But she'd never fought harder than she'd fought for Middleton on Diablo Night. Sheesh - it was _only _her hometown.

Something scraped at Kim then, something that reminded her it was Drakken's hometown, too. Mrs. Lipsky still lived here, over on the poorer, closer-to-Lowerton side.

Which meant if Drakken's plan had been to wipe them all off the map, he would have been counting on destroying his mother, too. If he'd been thinking all premeditated, he would have thought of her. Kim considered the possibility for, like, thirty seconds and then shook her head wryly.

For all the atrocious things Drakken was - villain, thief, manipulator - _killer _- he was also a mama's boy. Though he might have been capable of shamelessly slaughtering half the planet, even through the haze of hate, Kim couldn't see him trying to hurt his mother.

Kim wasn't quite sure what to make of that. But it pulled the last of the blinders off her future.

**Him**

"There you are, you poor thing. You brutal, murderous, abandoned thing."

-The Doctor

_"Dr. Drakken, come on down! You're the next contestant on _Is the Price Right_!"_

_He breaks into a grin that out-tooths the host's. He's always wanted to be on one of those game shows! Springing to his feet, he rides the sound wave of the crowd's excited squeals, adding a few of his own, until he arrives at the feet of Pete Repeat. And then, just because they're so noisy and wonderful, he spares a moment to wave at the adoring masses that have long been wasted on far lesser people._

_"Dr. Drakken, what an honor it is to have you on this show!" Repeat gushes. He says that to everyone, but with him, he _really means_ it. You can tell. "Can you tell us a little about yourself?"_

_Can he ever! He suavely plucks the microphone from Repeat's hands and holds it a whisper away from his lips. What emerges from the depths of his voicebox is far from a whisper, however. It's a boom that proudly states, "Yes, my name is Dr. Drakken. I'm forty-one years old. I'm a mad scientist bent on world conquest!" That's a sentence that needs an exclamation point or two. "My best friends are my poodle and my sidekick. _Their _names are Shego and Commodore Puddles." He cricks his mouth sideways at the audience. "I'm sure you can guess which is which."_

_Sure enough, they love that. Laughter ripples its way up to him, and it's the next best thing to bowing at his feet. _

_Repeat snatches the microphone back, not a wave of his perfect hair springing out of place. How _does _it do that? "That's great, wonderful to meet you!" He waggles his eyebrows back and forth above his famous sizzling eyes. "Shall we begin with Round One?"_

_He only allows a fraction of the delight turning circles inside him to display itself in his expression. "I don't know where else we would start!" The crowd goes nuts again. _

_Picking doors and answering trivia questions about 1940s sitcoms wins him tickets to Walt Disney World for two - thank you, thank you, TV Land. Round Two, he earns a pie in the face but also a new car, which he forfeits in Round Three for a year's supply of fun-sized candy bars. It's an obvious choice for a man without a valid driver's license, especially considering no one he knows is in need of a vehicle._

_"Well, they SAID that would be a year's supply!" Repeat chuckles as he tears into the bag and crams a couple of Milky Ways into his mouth. "But it might only last him three months!"_

_He snickers around the Snickers, blowing a chunk of chocolate through his nose in the process._

_Repeat's face grows serious then. "Now, Dr. Drakken, are you ready to play. . . the bonus round?"_

_Bonus round? It has such an impressive sound to it, it halts his jaw in mid-chomp. "Mmmm?" he questions, cheeks still stuffed._

_Repeat waves a hand carelessly through the air. "Not to worry, all the prizes you've won in the first three rounds are still yours, no matter what happens! This is strictly for fun and the possibility of an extra reward! So - are you game?"_

_He rubs his hands together in glee, smile widening to touch his earlobes. "Count me in, dawg!" he responds with all his uber-hip knowledge of teenage lingo._

_Repeat spins completely around in a circle, somehow managing not to trip over the microphone cord. He beams all shiny-like, poised and ready as an actor preparing for the greatest performance of his life. _I guess that would make it a "Repeat performance," _he cleverly concludes._

_The platform Repeat's on suddenly rises into the air, rotating as bursts of confetti rain down from the ceiling. He watches in awe, dancing from foot to foot in that way Mother refers to as "effervescent" and Shego just calls "obnoxious." Behind Repeat, two doors massive enough to conceal several doom rays appear. The red one is labeled "1," the yellow one "2." Too bad there's no blue. That's his lucky color._

_And then, with no warning, the lights all switch off except for one that centers square on him, the one speck of light in the darkness, thrilling but uncomfortable. Repeat's back down beside him, draping an arm around his shoulders. Only the fact that he can't feel the limb's weight across his back keeps him from yanking himself away. _

_"Dr. Drakken," Repeat begins, his voice now somber and hushed. "I understand you're a supervillain. And I also understand that you had a pretty great plan recently. Yet it failed. To make matters worse, people died." His eyes soften sympathetically at the corners, as if he can possibly know what it's like to pour every ounce you had - and several you _didn't _have - into a plot and watch it unravel anyway like a piece of cheap thread._

_Or to realize that dozens of coroners all over the world were printing your name under "Cause of Death."_

_His throat tightens. Gravity gets stronger. He's no longer the carefree, chipper Drakken whose greatest concern was how many Kit Kats he could fit in his mouth. Old and heavy-hearted, he can only nod._

_Repeat's intensity burns into him. "Here's your chance to make it right," he announces._

_"H-how?" _

_The host gestures grandly to the doors in the background, which seem to grow huger by the second. "Behind these doors are alternate universes. Door Number One leads you to a place where your plan wasn't put into action in the first place. The innocent lives are spared, but you're not ruler of the world - and you never will be."_

_It's like trying to swallow a lemon, getting that idea down. He likes the first part, but not the second. _Abhors _the second._

_"But behind Door Number Two. . . " Repeat takes a step closer, his breath hot in his ear. "The plan will have succeeded. Everyone who died will still be dead, but you will rule Earth. And ask yourself, Dr. Drakken – _is the price right_?"_

_He claps both hands to his cheeks and fights for oxygen. All decision-making skills grind to a standstill. It should be such a no-brainer, but it's not, and he's not sure which aspect of that bothers him more._

_On the one hand, the revival of those he didn't wish death upon in the first place. Mothers in Croatia, Brazilian sons, brothers under the Eiffel Tower. Nurses. Nice nurses that let you take a sticker and a sucker even though you're twice their age. Good people who should have lived._

_But on the other. . . the world. The whole entire planet. The life of a king, far above the qualms and aches that plague the common-folk. Everything he fought so hard for, passed to him on a platter by a quivering servant. The power to turn his whims into the law of the land. Trillions of dollars for him to spend however he pleases. Genuine respect at the sound of his name. Really, who cares if a couple of people die, so long as the rest of them revere him?_

_And yet, in some distant, unvillainous corner of himself, he does care, and it itches at him that he cares. He shifts his gaze upward to the blackness that now engulfs the studio. No answers there, so he glances back at Repeat, who appears to be fading dimly into the background. "Can't I. . . can't I have both?" he questions, voice seized by tremors. _

_No answer from Repeat either. Everyone and everything has frozen, leaving only the doors, so temptingly close, and the choice that will make or break him. Only he doesn't know which one's the maker and which is the breaker._

_He squints at the situation, trying to convert it to a chemical equation, a Doom Ray blueprint, something he can comprehend. The doors just stand there, though, silent and solemn as a pair of judges - until something happens that has no scientific explanation whatsoever. Darkness and light explode out of the doors - he can't tell which came from where - and tackle him, pinning him to the ground._

_The thing at his feet looks black in his peripheral vision, but when he stares at it straight on, it becomes a blinding white that must be on its way back from the dentist. Somewhere in the shapeless mass, hands form, reaching for him. They seem strong and warm, yet when they latch onto his ankles, he feels claws swipe his flesh._

_The cloud of white rises up to a towering height, rears back in the middle, and he's instantly aware that it's about to speak. He doesn't hear the words - or see them, the way he sometimes can in dreams - but he feels them, vibrating through his being. _Sacrifices are necessary to achieve your destiny, Drakken. And your destiny is to rule over this Earth. You're so close - don't call it quits now. Don't let Kim Possible win.

_Its voice is slinky and sweet and it promises power. Each word, though, is repeated in a low hiss, creating a slithering echo that should be scary but isn't. Beguiling as a siren, it walks its fingers down his neck in that way that makes your whole body quiver in ecstasy. _

_It moves closer, the faint whiff of sulfur drowning in a deluge of lavender perfume. He probably shouldn't trust it, but what it offers cannot be resisted. The thing that will coax the itch in his chest to nonexistence, the thing that will bring him facedown respect from everyone who's ever belittled him, the thing he needs more than skin to hold him together._

_It hurts so bad he lunges for it, but a pressure on his arm stops him. It's like sun-softened metal and its grip on him gives one firm squeeze and lets go, as if trying to not freak him out._

_Still, he flinches when this other mist, white from every angle, gives off an ion of speech. But there are no threats in the gentle flow across his forearm, no bribes. Just a soft, sad plea of _Come home_._

_And that's so unlike anything he's heard for so long that his spirit grows dangerously soft, vulnerable. _

_But - _home_? Where is _that_? He hasn't had anything he'd call a "home" in so long. True, there are his lairs, but they're always been destroyed or raided by Global Justice, so he's learned not to get too attached to them. He's used to moving from one place to another, unencumbered by sloppy sentiment. _

_The one place he can think of is his mother's house, where he grew up. The kitchen that always smells of good cooking, the tiny, cozy living room, and his bedroom in the basement, carpet stained and splotched from years of chemical mishaps. But he is _not _like Frugal Lucre, still living in his mother's basement, afraid to venture out into the world on his own. _

_He is a supervillain - the planet's future ruler - and homes are for sissies. _

_That's why it scares him so bad that it sounds so appealing. _

Dr. Drakken awoke with a start, a jerk of the nerves that almost rocketed him out of his clothing. The clothing that felt scratchy and shaming against his skin, not like the smooth silkiness of his lab coat at all. . .

He peered down at himself and saw just what he'd feared he'd see. An orange jumpsuit, full of loose, I-used-to-fit folds and stained with a week's worth of sweat. He wasn't on a game show at all. He was in prison. In the TV room. Alone. Without Lucre, which was wondrous, and without Shego, which was horrific.

_This _was his home now.

Drakken pulled the pillow out from behind his head and pressed it to his mouth, gagging down the now-standard rush of nausea. It was coming back to him. It was visiting day. Lucre was called out to see his mother. The rest of them were taken here to wait for their own visitors, also mostly mothers. He must have fallen asleep; he was so tired all the time anymore. . .

And he wasn't truly alone. Other prisoners lounged nearby, on other couches across the room. A few reading. Most watching TV. Some flexing their biceps and trying to out-man each other. Nobody within ten feet of Drakken, though. It was like they all thought he was contagious.

Normally, that would be hurtful, but in this corner of Hades, to go unnoticed was a good thing. Drakken was so accustomed to being punched and pinched and thwacked in the ribs that days where no one wounded him were the exception to the rule. It almost wasn't frightening anymore.

Almost.

Drakken flopped over onto his right side. Somehow, he'd wound up on his left as he'd slept, back to his fellow inmates. You could never turn your back in here. It was a miracle he didn't feel any new bruises. There was only the tender spot on his arm, throbbing with his pulse, refusing to heal.

_Wish you were here, Shego_, Drakken thought miserably. His tummy gurgled its agreement, and the muscles in his jaw twitched with reflux.

The loneliness was in danger of searing through him, so Drakken snapped his attention to the TV in front of him. The news was on. He frowned. He'd much prefer a cartoon, a documentary on pasteurization, a goofy sitcom, _Ballroom Dancing with B Actors_. Basically anything other than the news.

At least the Dia - uh - the attack - uh - that night was five months gone, so it was no longer the main subject of every broadcast. Still, it was hard for a newscaster to go the sixty-with-commercials minutes without mentioning it, and it landed square in his belly every time.

Right now, some lady with a tan that said she got more than an hour of sunlight a day was talking about some fire in Go City. Apparently it was pretty bad. A house was destroyed, and people suspected arson - a word that meant "setting fire to something on purpose." It was a word Drakken had learned from the gossip about Pyro Pete.

He rubbed his clammy hands on his thighs, too hot and too cold all at once. The remote was all the way across the room, two inches away from a massive man who was tipped back in a recliner, snoring like a laser on the fritz. No way was Drakken going to try and get it away from him. He'd seen scrambles for the remote devolve into full-blown fights, with wild punches and cussing that sent him under the nearest table, rocking back and forth with his hands over his ears, convincing himself it wasn't him they were beating senseless.

So - the news. Distraction. Arson. Fire.

And then, all of a sudden, the room grew narrower, squeezing Drakken's insides until he was sure he'd rupture. There had been so much fire that night, the Diablos' laser arms and flaming jetpacks, the killer glare in Kim Possible's eyes, the flare of Shego's plasma glow, the burn in his own chest that had to be satisfied.

That last one had never gone away. Drakken had forgotten how it felt not to have what must have been blisters on each individual neck hair, molten lava coursing through your lungs, and flames licking at your stomach that made indigestion seem like a brief glitch in the system. The only blood that concerned him now was his own. Tormented in his veins, it scorched any remaining misgivings from his heart about taking more lives. He didn't care who he had to destroy if it would soothe the rope burn that irritated his flesh from just beyond his reach. The number of Doomsday devices he could have silenced Lucre with by now was staggering.

He gnawed his frustration, injuring the corner of his cheek in the process. A supervillain powerless, a mad scientist with no science to claim what was rightfully his. It was enough to make a grown man cry, only he might as well sign his own death warrant. Convicted felons didn't cry.

But a yelp escaped from Drakken's lips as the picture on the screen changed from a boring display of a burned-out building to BREAKING NEW FOOTAGE! of police cars gathered in a circle on the banks of a river. A man was being shoved into the back of one of the cars. A man with burly shoulders and blond hair - and a tattoo on his left arm that read ED.

Eddy.

Drakken didn't know what it was that constricted his throat then. Maybe he truly was just so lonesome he'd even be grateful for his traitorous cousin's company. He couldn't be worse than Lucre.

"Dude, you gotta get me away from her!" Eddy's voice pleaded from the television. He was all but grabbing an officer's uniform and shaking him. "I don't even know what happened! I told her my plan and she just went nuts! Seriously!"

_Serves you right, Eddy._ Drakken scowled until the crumple of his chin went taut. Anyone with more than two brain cells - as Eddy had proven to have - knew that he and Shego were a package deal. You couldn't have one without the other, and yet Eddy had come to break her out and left his own flesh and blood to rot.

Like he didn't matter. Like he wasn't worth the extra effort.

Drakken's knees began to bounce, the muscles in them spasming. The only way to fix that was to draw them up to his chest, wrap his arms around them, and rest his head on top of them - and since no one was watching him, Drakken went ahead and did it. Pangs prodded up and down him.

"_Please _tell me you guys are going to finish kicking his butt for me."

Drakken turned stiffly, blinking at the screen in disbelief. That was a voice he knew as well as his own breathing cycle.

Sure enough, a second pair of handcuffs were being snapped on a pair of little green wrists, the only things visible under a dark, sopping mass of hair. It hung in the woman's face as if it were something drowned and dead, all in one clump with only a few free springs at the end to curl upward.

"Shego!" The word erupted, chickenish, from Drakken's lips. He longed to rush to the screen and plaster his hands to her image, but to feel glass where her familiarity should have been would break him for sure. This time, he couldn't keep his face from caving.

As if she'd heard him, the woman-girl straightened up and shook the hair back. The pang that went through Drakken then forced him from his curled-up bundle and left him panting in a sprawl across the couch.

The green eyes and hard set of the jaw were Shego's. But that - that - _getup_! Drakken couldn't even call it an outfit. It was like nothing he'd ever seen on Shego before, and it burned his corneas to see it. He couldn't pull his eyes away, though.

Earrings bigger than some of his master remotes dangled from her ears. Drakken didn't see how they kept from ripping her lobes off. A tooth-like necklace that matched her eyes hung around her neck, looking ready to bite anyone who came in too close. On either side of that was the flipped-up collar of a pink-and-green-plaid shirt. With a crevice of a neckline. A very, very deep crevice. He could feel his mouth doing its pre-vomit quiver.

The shirt stopped too short, revealing every inch of her stomach. The pants she wore were dull gold with black, slashing tiger stripes and looked like they would require surgery to get out of. And the handcuffs clacked against a jangle of bracelets that made her arms look limp and frail - not something he'd seen often on Shego. She tottered in two-inch heels, fixing a policewoman with her trademark nasty glare, her young little body all exposed in a way that made him feel dirty.

Drakken was surprised by the intensity of the hatred winding around his body like a snake. This was Eddy's doing, he knew it. Shego always snorted her contempt for girls who dressed like that. She wasn't - she wouldn't -

He really wished he hadn't seen her belly button.

"I don't know about kicking it," the policewoman replied, with a hint of a twinkle in her eye. "But I can assure you, we'll slap it into a federal prison."

Good. Drakken tried to toss his head away from the screen, but Shego - he hadn't seen her for so long, and even in that disgusting excuse for clothing, she was a welcome sight. _Please come back for me,_ he begged her through the airwaves. _I need you._

And she needed him - to protect her from people like Eddy, who wanted to dress her up like some kind of - he didn't know the word. He didn't _want _to know the word.

"Works for me," Shego finally said. She straightened her shoulders, lost in the hair, and then - and then she smiled.

Drakken was sure he'd been clubbed. It wasn't that he expected Shego to be happy only when she was in his presence. Even _he_ wasn't that much of a narcissist - a psychology term he'd heard passed around in stage whispers while head doctors tried to decide whether he was fit to stand trial.

No, it was what wasn't there on her face. No loneliness, no anguish, nothing except pleasure deriving from hardened anger. Shego looked exactly the same as she always had. No sign that she was missing her best friend. Not one shadow across her face that would say things just weren't the same without Drakken.

Like he didn't matter. Like he'd never mattered.

The memory of her departure rose in Drakken's esophagus, where it lodged and wouldn't clear out. She'd put her fingers to her forehead in the shape of an L - L for what? Lipsky? Lame-O? Lithium? And she'd cried, "Later, loser!"

But she must have been talking to Lucre. Now _there_ was a loser. Couldn't even keep a job at Smarty Mart. His only talent was yakking the ears off a. . . something with big ears. His name even sounded like "loser," especially if you were Scottish and had Nutella in your mouth.

Right. Right?

Another voice that Drakken knew all too well blared from the screen then. "I'm just glad everyone's okay," it said, springy and cheerful and so revoltingly good it could have belonged to a Girl Scout. The scene had switched from the police cars to Kim Possible, standing with such poise it made him jealous, talking with a reporter.

"I mean," the redheaded thorn in his side continued, "if that thing had gotten up to maximum power, it could have destroyed the Earth."

Now that sounded promising. Why did she have to spoil everything?

"Absolutely. You saved us all," the reporter fawned. Drakken's gullet went into convulsions. Watching praise being heaped on Kim Possible was like watching someone scoop dog doo.

"And what is going on the world of Kim Possible these days?" Reporter Lady continued. Her smile was too big, Drakken concluded. A few days in this place would take care of that.

Kim Possible's own smile lit up her whole face and ignited the pain in Drakken's chest. She was more than happy to share all the details, and share she did. Ohmigosh, it was her senior year, and she would rule the school - _like she hadn't already_ - and she was DATING the buffoon - whose name turned out to be Ron - _what a stupid name_ - and she was really looking forward to whatever lay ahead of her - _why wouldn't she; it would always be something good_. Her family was doing well, her friends were great, her oatmeal was never burned.

Drakken hated her more than ever.

He kept waiting, waiting for the reporter to ask the obvious question - _how are you coping now that your arch-nemesis is imprisoned for life?_ - but she never did. He looked expectantly at Kim Possible herself, hoping she'd slip in a line about how boring her life was without Drakken to foil or what a load off her mind it was not to have to scan his lair for suspicious activity every day. Just _something_, a sign that she felt his absence. At that point, he would have even accepted her pity.

But nothing. Kim Possible smiled through the whole interview, and Drakken's name never left her upturned lips. She yammered about cheerleading and homecoming committee and all those other shallow high school things as if they were actually important. If anything, she had a bouncier bounce to her step, additional confidence in the lift of her chin. His foe was moving on with her life.

Like he didn't matter. Like he didn't make any difference at all.

It wasn't anger that Drakken felt surging through him, but he pretended it was. _I still exist!_ he wanted to howl._ You don't have the right to forget about me just because I'm in here!_

In here, where the orange jumpsuit and standard-issue white sneakers alone branded him one in ten thousand. In here, where only one guard had decency to address him by his proper villain-title. In here, where he was Inmate 176-49005, not a person who loved chocolate chips in his pancakes and lairs with high ceilings.

Children flashed through Drakken's mind then, their tear-streaked faces as they fled from their toys-turned-demons. Their little legs churned for their lives. One misstep and they would be incinerated.

It was an image he saw at least every other day, an unfair, manipulative image he'd learned to reject. But now, with his heart sagging at the corners from watching his world unaffected by his absence, it was almost enough to squeeze out the thought, _I SHOULD be here_.

No! Drakken gave his ponytail a firm shake, slapping its tickly, jagged sides against his face. He shot to his feet, away from the guilt, above it all, where he belonged. The floor jittered below him, but he didn't care. Didn't care about anything except setting himself straight.

"Do you know what I went through for that plan?" he bellowed at someone, no one, everyone. "I took psychology classes! I read teen magazines until I could only think in text-speak! I wrestled information from Big Daddy Brotherson himself! I managed NOT TO TELL ANYONE what my plan was! I went months and months with all those genius ideas inside me, and I couldn't even brag about it! Even _Shego_ was in the dark, and that _never_ happens! I kidnapped my most hated foe from college, mind-wiped him, and fed him to my mutant octopus! I left his daughter and her little friend in the care of my Synthodrones! And - oh, let's talk about the Synthodrones! Do you have any idea how long it took to program those, much less _build _them? And to give one a face? A name? Make it your son, and then watch it die?"

Drakken hadn't known half those words were stored up in his knotted self until they came exploding out. Weak and woozy, he tilted his head up to the ceiling and hissed the only logical conclusion. "It was the most brilliant plot anyone could have come up with. I _shouldn't _be here. Where I deserve to be is on a throne."

The reality of it was so maddening that his legs couldn't hold him up any longer. He collapsed back onto the couch, burning and itching and aching everywhere. With a certain degree of sick fascination, Drakken studied the hollow of his stomach. Every day, his hip bones seemed to jut out a little farther. He wondered how close he was to death by starvation. Would Kim Possible be sorry _then_?

Probably not.

Drakken's throat swelled, but he held back the deadly sobs. It was a good thing, too, because seconds later he saw motion out of the corners of his eye. Heard the rug in front of his couch rustle with sneaker-steps. Smelled sweat and cinnamon gum. Felt the cushions sag with someone's weight -

And the next thing he knew, two men were on him, one on either side. The one on the left had a vicious grip on Drakken's ponytail. His partner held Drakken's right arm, fingernail posed centimeters above the wound that still released pain so easily. An obvious threat was written between his scruffy brows: _One wrong move and I nick it._

Before Drakken's respiratory system could begin to function again, a third guy dropped onto the sofa across from him and straddled Drakken's legs. "Hey, bluiser," he snarled down at Drakken. "Heard you talkin' to yourself over here."

Drakken immediately adopted his best impassive expression. But, although he was getting better at blanking his face, he couldn't control his heartbeat, pulsating in his neck and wrists, so intensely they could surely hear it.

"Yeah?" Drakken shot back through lips that had gone instantly dry. "So what business is that of yours?" He was being flipped inside-out; he didn't even recognize this guy. It used to be he could name everyone who was out to get him - or at least what organization they belonged to.

The man's smile was so unnerving, it could earn any movie featuring it an automatic R rating. "Well, I'm just a real nice guy," he drawled, eliciting snickers from his two cronies. "And when I heard little bluiser over here, all upset, it got me thinking that you needed some help from a friend."

Four months ago, Drakken would have believed him. He would have taken what hope he could get. Now he knew better than to trust anyone. Besides, there was the curl to the man's mouth - and, of course, the name "bluiser." Not "bruiser," oh, no. There was too much respect in that term. Too much respect and no truth, unless you counted "bruise" as an intransitive verb.

"Get lost," was the most Drakken could summon. And even it came out in abbreviated gasps of air. If only that one dude would have let go of his hair, he might have been able to not panic. . .

His tormentor smirked with a coldness to rival Shego's. "Or what? You'll throw up on me?"

That was a distinct possibility. Drakken's stomach was already churning as if it were being offered pickled herring.

"Nothin' to worry about, bluiser." The man thumped Drakken's chest, and Drakken barely restrained a yelp. Not a whole lot there to soften the blow anymore. "We're just here to cheer you up."

One of his front teeth was a solid gold chunk that glinted in the room's too-harsh lights. Under normal circumstances, the shininess would have thrilled up Drakken's spine, and he would have scrambled in close to see if he could find his reflection in such a small space. But "normal circumstances" had died at the hands of the Diablos, too.

Except the Diablos didn't have hands. Not the killer ones. And they had been nothing more than the instrument of death.

"So what's the problem?" Words Drakken had yearned to hear for so long, spat in his face like acid. "Are you sad, bluiser?"

Yes, he was, and he didn't know why he had to hide it. How could anyone _not _be sad in here?

Fear crawled over every trembling inch of Drakken's body, but he kept his eyes hard and narrowed on the man. _Don't respond - don't engage him - he'll go away._ That sounded so simple, but he'd had more luck shifting the Earth on its axis.

"Why are you sad?" The man's eyes drooped at the corners with fake sympathy. "C'mon, tell your pal. What's the matter?"

Noises of rage clawed at Drakken's throat, and he clamped his lips shut over them. Letting those loose was the quickest way to become the laughingstock of the entire penitentiary. He was still determined not to answer at all - until the guy on his left gave Drakken's ponytail a sharp tug and yanked a retort out of him. "I don't know!" he sneered, injecting Shego-sarcasm into his voice full-force. "Maybe because some - boorish -" yes, that was a good word - "thugs keep coming up and sitting on me! Wouldn't that make _you _sad?"

One of Gold Tooth's cohorts spoke up for the first time. "Nah, I don't think that's it." Everything he said sounded nasty and pointed and drove into you like the sickening smell of second-hand smoke. Drakken would know - it was hard not to inhale that around here. "I think maybe he's missing his girlfriend. Don't you?"

Drakken's brain immediately looped into a useless gnarl. Girlfriend? What were they _talking _about? He didn't have a girlfriend. He'd _never_ had a girlfriend, at least not for longer than twenty minutes.

The gold-toothed smile grew wider, scarier, ready to feast. "Yeaaaaah, I think that's it." He squinted at Drakken's face and made his tone nasally and mocking. "Is that it, bluiser? Your girlfriend isn't coming for you, and you think she doesn't love you anymore?"

Understanding triggered pain. Much pain, hard to keep off his face. Drakken tried not to imagine Shego, perched in a chair next to him, lip curled into what he could never tell was amusement or disdain, as he explained an evil scheme to her. "She's not my girlfriend," he forced from his tightening throat.

The third man, who still held a threatening nail over the reddened jag on Drakken's arm, let out one of those caveman-type whistles. "Man, you must be nuts. She is one hot. . . "

Drakken deliberately shut his ears down at that point. The guys in here could turn everything into something nasty and crude. And, as ticked off as he was with Shego, he wouldn't hear that kind of talk about her, not ever. He rocked his body as much as he could to block off the TV screen, just in case it was

still displaying images of her and her belly button.

When Ponytail Grabber dropped the howl to a whisper, though, that caught Drakken's senses off guard. "His cell's across the hall from mine," Ponytail Grabber divulged, as if it were top secret. "And he calls for her in his sleep all the time."

"Ooh!" was the only kid-friendly thing that rose from the other two. Drakken lay there, shivering so hard his legs were burning with friction. His cheeks, he knew, were turning a vulnerable shade of pink. He'd never confided in anyone about the nightmares that tangled him in sweaty sheets every night, and he'd never dreamed - no pun intended - that they were that noticeable.

"Yeah," Fingernail agreed, with a hard snort that placed Drakken somewhere below phytoplankton on the food chain. "He's scared of his own shadow."

What they didn't know was that his shadow had grown claws and teeth and darkened the entire world on that fire-fueled night.

By now, a crowd had gathered around the couch, pressing in for a clearer look. A low chant of "Fight! Fight! Fight!" reverberated among them. It was just like high school, only these men were older, bigger, meaner, and he'd put nothing past them. He was in here with killers.

Not for several ripping breaths did Drakken remember that was because he was a killer, too.

And this wasn't a fight. Dr. Drakken wasn't built for fighting, he was built for escape. With a twist of his getting-bonier-by-the-day shoulders and a determined thrust of his legs, he turned his body to butter and was able to slide out of the grasps of the two smaller guys.

Before Drakken could leap to his feet and make his getaway, however, Gold Tooth was on him. In a span of a blink, he'd pinned Drakken back to the couch, forearm pressed punishingly against his throat, body weight hovering in a distinct menace above Drakken's rib cage.

Drakken closed his eyes and wished on the stars spinning in his head. _Get me out of here. Or send Shego. PLEASE!_

"What was that?" Gold Tooth's eyes were mocking, glittering, two inches away from Drakken's. He could feel the man's breath mingling with his own. "Did you say 'please,' bluiser?"

_Yes - let me up! Don't hurt me!_ was what Drakken wanted to cry. But he refused to. His pride was the only thing he had left, and he'd already damaged it by letting the "please" slip. What great timing - he hadn't said "please" in months. . .

"Get off me!" he growled instead. "Get off me or so help me I'll -" The sentence dropped off into nothingness.

"Or you'll what?" Gold Tooth read his mind. "What can you do to me?"

Drakken's very skin boiled. At this point, nothing. If only he had his Doomsday devices, he could kill this man. He could kill them all.

The pressure on Drakken's neck intensified. This man wasn't as big as the one who had hacked open his arm a month or two ago, but the arm that restricted Drakken's airways was lean. Not lean as in the euphemism he used for his own recently-developed scrawniness. Lean as in hard and sinewy and strong, without a speck of flab for Drakken to latch onto and pinch as hard as he could.

"You're scum, bluiser," Gold Tooth huffed into Drakken's ear, ruffling the shaggy spot where his hair started to get longer. "You thought you could conquer the whole world. And you can't even fight off a money launderer."

Who washed their money? It would all have to be in change, because dollar bills fell apart when they got wet. Even with his limited funds, Drakken knew that much.

"When I'm in charge of the world," Drakken responded, reaching for some of the creepy calmness he'd achieved on that wonderful, terrible night, "you will suffer greatly! I shall make you my sanitation slave and make you scrub my toilets seven times a day!"

Nothing changed on Gold Tooth's face. Not the evil eyes, not the sickening curve of his lips, not the unyielding chin. It was one of the worst fates Drakken could imagine, and this guy didn't even flinch. Drakken mentally fused his head onto Eric's and, with great pleasure, watched him melt into a lifeless heap.

"You know what you are?" Drakken continued. Fury at being trapped and helpless before such a group of imbeciles made him brave. "You're just a jerk! A big, stupid, high-school jerk-jock who has nothing better to do than pick on people smarter than you!"

Gold Tooth's arm tightened and pressed fear back into Drakken's pulse. "And you know what _you_ are?" he replied without missing a beat.

"Ruler of the -"

"No." Gold Tooth's biceps gave a jerk, twisting Drakken's larynx. "You're kindling for Pyro Pete."

An instantaneous image flashed through Drakken's mind. The fire alarm going off back in June. The screams - some horrified, some delighted - that rose from a corner of the multipurpose room and spread to everyone like a virus. The faint scent of smoke, and not from anyone's cigarette, permeating the room. A scrawny redheaded man being hustled to the medical ward, one leg of his jumpsuit charred black.

None of it was very vivid - Drakken had been two hundred feet away when it occurred - but it was enough. He could no longer keep the fear from straying across his face.

And Gold Tooth saw it, because triumph puffed him up even bigger than his six-foot, two-hundred-pounds. "After all -" he delivered the final blow with cool satisfaction - "it's not like anyone would miss you."

Terror and something a thousand times worse opened a yawning hole in Drakken's gut. He envisioned Eddy's oblivious face, Shego's indifferent one, Kim Possible's cheerleader-perky, unaffected one. Shudders went through him, deep, dark things that attempted to revive his crushed heart.

That kind of brokenness couldn't be hidden. No less than fifty prisoners watched Dr. Drakken's tough act fail him and misery reduce him to a crumpled wreck of a man.

The only thing that could save his street cred now was vicious anger. And Drakken didn't have to reach far into himself to find some. It waited just below the surface, desperate to be released. He was mad in both senses of the word, and that was a dangerous combination.

With knife upon knife jabbing into his torso, Gold Tooth's eyes sticking him like a pair of syringes, and no Doomsday device at his disposal, Drakken did the only biologically possible thing. Something he hadn't done since he was about five years old.

He jerked his head down sharply and buried his teeth in the muscled flesh against his neck.

Gold Tooth let go with a barrage of curses - the inmate version of a yelp. It would have been an excellent time to make a break for it, but the fire in Drakken's spirit wouldn't let him. As the gold-toothed man swore over the bite marks in his forearm, smoke all but poured from Drakken's ears as it registered that this man's suffering couldn't begin to compare to his own.

He had to change that.

With a roar that came from some deep place Drakken had only dipped into a few times in his life, he threw himself at the bigger man. His arms flailed; he had no idea what to do, but that only kindled his fire.

Drakken clawed at the front of Gold Tooth's jumpsuit, his jagged nails catching and tearing on the coarse fabric. His hands somehow managed to curl themselves into fists, but he couldn't figure out where to bring them down. Shoulders? Too big and tough. Chest? Ditto. Eye? Too far out of his reach. He flung a fist out blindly and scored a tiny bop against the man's pectorals.

Finally, his eyes searing with frustration that inevitably would manifest itself as tears, Drakken pulled back and spat directly into Gold Tooth's face. Because the man had dared to mock his pain. Because the world had been denied him as its ruler and it didn't even seem to mind. Because he couldn't spit in Kim Possible's or Eddy's or Shego's.

Many a great man - including, perhaps, Dr. Drakken himself - would have slunk away when confronted with such utter contempt. But this man must have had a PhD in brawling. Drakken saw only a white-top-gray-sole blur of the foot that swung out and smashed him square between the legs.

_Database error. RXFSUZVJPQBTEGHIKLMAYDWCON. Press any key to continue._

Drakken reeled backward into the broad chest of a guard. The meager contents of his stomach threatened revolt, and he put a hand up over his mouth, breathing in gasps that punched his airways. The floor seemed close, very close.

The guard must have seen him slipping, because he grabbed him in what would have been called a hug anywhere but prison. Arms held him up when his own body no longer could. The floor was no longer at eye level, but it was cycling the entire color spectrum, and Drakken felt his face draining to white.

"You all right, Lipsky?" The guard's voice reached him from a great distance.

_Lipsky_. Drakken couldn't even correct him. He could only dangle there, trying not to puke, his entire body folding in on itself. "Oh. . . oh. . . oh gosh. . . ." he gulped out before testing the words for fierceness.

In the background, Drakken could hear the two accomplices congratulating their leader for making short work of his opponent. He ground his teeth and wished plague and pestilence upon them.

And then another voice added to the chaos - the authoritative voice of a second guard. "You just can't seem to stay out of fights, can you?" it inquired of Gold Tooth. Its tone was professional and detached, no anger in it. Where was the outrage on Drakken's behalf?

Gold Tooth stabbed a finger at Drakken, who was trying not to melt against the guard who supported him. "He started it!" he spat.

For an instant, they were back in elementary school. The only thing for Drakken to do was stick out his tongue, an act that left him winded and sore.

The second guard shook his head and plopped his hands smartly on his hips. "Don't give me that dog food," he said, as boredly as if he'd been waiting on his dial-up Internet for five minutes. "I saw you pinning his neck down."

Drakken would have smiled if his brain hadn't been scattered across five continents. His knees shook, belying the victory.

And when Drakken chanced a glare up at Gold Tooth, the man didn't seem to be aware that he'd just lost. His mouth was drawn up into a jeer, the metallic dental appliance flaring like hate. At his side, the guy who'd held Drakken's ponytail captive spewed out "bluiser," "mama's boy," and "pantywaste" - predictable insults that shouldn't have stung anymore. His friend substituted obscenity for cliche.

Why, oh, why could the ceiling not collapse on their heads? If Drakken had had access to his Molecular Obliviator Scope, he would have brought the whole place down on top of them with a single press of a button, but right now it was a struggle just to get air.

And fire couldn't burn without air.

The second guard wrenched Gold Tooth's hands behind his back and told the other two to watch their mouths - which was, of course, fruitless. From yards and yards away, he could make out the face of the one guard who called him "Drakken." It was sad. Sympathetic, even. Gave Drakken a mushy feeling inside that he couldn't identify.

The guard propping him up swiveled Drakken around and clapped his wrists together, sending his circulation into a preparatory frenzy. "Maybe we oughta take him back to his cell, too," he told the other guard, as if they were discussing a toddler who wasn't intelligent enough to know he was being talked about. "For his own protection."

_Protection _was a funny term, full of relief and replete with humiliation. _Cell _offered no such mixed emotions. There was only the picture of a box of a room, smaller than some of the security monitors Drakken owned, dim even at high noon, with bleak, barred shadows to serve as a constant reminder that you had been filtered out of society for your foulness. Windows that teased you with their view of open meadows. Lumpy cots and a toilet right smack out there in the open. You could never get warm.

Drakken shook his head, as best he could in his doubled-over position. He wanted to cry, "No! Don't make me go back into the dark! I'll never come out!" But his vocal chords were thready, unreliable, produced only a squeak when he managed to pry his dried-up lips apart.

Ugly laughter came toward him in gashes. No, he couldn't say much for the company here, but the presence of other bodies - at a reasonable distance, of course - kept Drakken from flipping completely inside-out. The light was harsh, but at least it was there.

Drakken straightened himself and tucked both hands into the drenched armpits of his jumpsuit. The nearest guard wore a don't-you-dare-argue expression, but he _had _to argue. "I'll go," he quavered, forcing detachment into his eyes. "But not with you!"

The guard's jaw plunged toward his Adam's apple. "Excuse me?" he demanded.

The anger rumbled in Drakken's throat; detachment wasn't working as well as he'd hoped. "I want _him_." He swayed in the almost-nice guard's direction and pointed a trembling finger.

Both guards exchanged significant looks. Then, to Drakken's eternal disgust, they began to chuckle.

More laughing at him. It made killing seem more and more appealing by the second.

But that disappeared when the nicer guard pulled Drakken's wrists behind his back with big hands, gentler than any touch he'd felt in the last five months. Their warmth raised goosebumps on his fear-icy arms. He kept his head down as he was ushered from the room, avoiding the gazes that he knew were empty and deadly as black holes. Ten minutes earlier, Drakken might have been able to hold his head in the manner befitting an entitled tyrant. Not anymore.

The hallways were empty and lonely, Drakken's shoes scuffling on the stone floors as if his feet didn't want to go where they were being taken. Cells rose up on either side of him like enemy fortresses, stealing his breath. He couldn't help it - he pressed just a little closer to the guard and bit back a whimper.

Back in his own cell, Drakken settled himself criss-cross-applesauce on his cot and hopefully surveyed his surroundings for any changes. None since that morning. Familiar and smothering, it would never feel like home.

At least Lucre wasn't around. He could finally enjoy some peace and quiet.

Still, Drakken found himself scrambling on all fours to the end of the cot, peering anxiously into the blackness beyond for a trace of fellow humanity. The almost-nice guard stood there, hands resting on his belt, ready to defend himself but not anticipating the need to. "You - you'll stay, right?" Drakken heard himself ask.

The guard barked a gruff laugh that made Drakken think of fresh-brewed coffee. "Uh, yeah. What did you think, I would leave you to climb out the window? We've had this conversation before."

A light bulb bloomed over Drakken's head. The guard must have seen it, because he slammed his fingers into a makeshift stop sign. "I wouldn't try it if I were you, Drakken," he advised. "We've had a couple of prisoners get stuck in there and had to call a guy with a hacksaw. Although," he added with a grimace, "you're about thin enough."

Drakken's neck hairs all tingled until sweat beaded at his hairline. _Hacksaw_? For what? To slice off their heads, as punishment?

If Shego were here, she would have told him that was a ridiculous thought and not to be a moron. And he would have snapped at her to zip it, and she would have ignored him, and it would have pinched between his shoulder blades.

The word _wistfulness _made it sound like a soft thing, but what plummeted over Drakken nearly knocked him off his feet. Without warning, his eyes were awash in memories, and a frail moan rose from the hurricane in his midsection. He grabbed his cheeks and pulled them downward, elongating deadened tissue until he was sure he must resemble a bloodhound, to keep the tears at bay. None of his captors were going to see Dr. Drakken cry, ever again.

Once the moisture in his eyes was no longer in danger of condensing and spilling over, Drakken turned his attention to smoothing out a few particularly obnoxious bulges in the too-thin bedspread, sighing to himself. His back was creaky and achy enough without having to sleep on a mountain range. Finally, when he was as settled as he could be in this sordid place, Drakken retrieved a Spider-Man comic he'd hidden under his pillow and lost himself in it.

He tried his usual technique of drawing parallels between himself and the witty, brilliant hero, but that was a connection his brain couldn't make today. Drakken could only see himself in Kingpin and Green Goblin and Tombstone - the monsters.

Drakken gripped the page corners tighter, as if he could wring the solution from them. What had ever happened to the bespectacled, idealistic kid who had wanted to conquer the world in order to _fix _it? How had he transformed into the Master of the Diablos?

He squinted off into the sea of pain and loneliness and fear and the power that had offered escape from it all. Like a dented record jamming on the player, _power _was what his brain kept getting stuck on.

Drakken glanced up at the ceiling, smudged with years of graffiti, and squirmed a little. All at once, he was self-conscious, as if his evil had been stripped away and left him naked underneath. It had _always_ been about power, he reminded himself fiercely. To admit anything less was to forfeit his very status as a supervillain. To be labeled, instead, "misguided," which sounded weak and would certainly never take over the world.

Still, he had never been well acquainted with power until the months leading up to that night of so many fires. Then it had slipped in and shown Drakken all he was missing out on. It was like getting free access to an online role-playing game - then finding out you had to pay big bucks if you wanted to do anything more than aimlessly chase your tail. The closer he had gotten, the deeper it had cut, but it had caressed him with the promise of never hurting again once it was finally his.

He'd wanted it. _Needed_ it. Still did. A throne beneath him and a crown above him were two of the few good dreams he'd ever had.

But they were the exhausted dreams of a half-dead man, and as Drakken curled himself into a ball in that forsaken corner, his esophagus ran up and down with ripples. He wished for Shego, security wrapped in sarcasm, so hard he could scarcely keep it inside. For her to break him out of this eternal dungeon. For her to kill everyone around him so that he didn't have to.

For her to roll her eyes, twitch her lips, tease him with her words, and reunite their evil family. Because, for lack of a throne, with them was where he belonged.

**~Okay, so it looks like Kim and Drakken have both suffered from a so-the-trauma. Difference being, Kim's in a place where she's loved and can heal. Drakken. . . eh, not so much. Stay tuned.**

**Joking reference to those irritating online games in loving memory of Disney's Toontown Online. **

**Thanks for reading, everyone! Please review if you feel so inclined. I'll see ya next time. ~**


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